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1 Mi<i(i- 



THE I-IOUSEHOLD BOOK 



IRISH ELOQUENCE; 



CONTAINING THE 



SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'GONNELL, RICIIABD LALOB 

SHEIL, JOHN PHILPOT CURB AN, EENBY GRATTAN, 

EDMUND BUBKE, BICRABD BBINLEY SHEBIDAN, ' 

CHABLES PHILLIPS, BO DEBT EM3IET, 

WHITESIDE, MEAGHEB, 

McCEK 



WITH BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 

BYA MEM BEE OF THE NEW YOEK BAE. 



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NEW YOEK : 


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JAMES 


A. 


McGEE, PUBLISHEE, 








9 Baeclay Steeet, 










1871. 

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V 



Entered according to act of Congress in the year 1870, by 

JAJIES A. McGEE, 
In the office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 



/X-3VYjf 



'WjT^' 



INTRODUCTION. 



It is a singular fact, that, by tlie admission of English critics, 
oiu- language is indebted for its first great examples of elo- 
quence to that island which has so long been oppressed — un- 
happy Ireland. 

England could boast of men of great learning, genius, and 
power ; could enumerate some great names, who won distinc- 
tion in the pulpit, at the bar, or in the legislative hall, by dis- 
courses full of learning and classic purity, animated at times 
by a kind of severe eloquence ; but, as England lacked large 
popular assemblies, as appeals were never made, or, if made, 
would be lost, where imagination, fancy and vivacity quickened 
them, where the orator aimed not only to convince the mind, 
but to sway the feelings, true eloquence was almost unknown. 

Burke, nurtured in the sister isle, full of the rich imagination 
of the Celtic race, clothing his periods in words of rich and melo- 
dious harmony, appealing to every sympathy, every noble in- 
stinct and sentiment, gave the first example of true English 
eloquence. 

The struggles of Ireland had called forth a race of speakers, 
fuU of classic culture, with ardent imagination, sensitive feel- 
ing, tenderness, warmth, and passion, which, devoted to the 
cause of liberty, made their words stir every fibre of the 
heart, enlist the affections, arouse the slothful, cheer the diffi- 
dent, and unite all in the path in Avhich the orator led the way. 

The Irish parliament gave a field for the eloquence of Flood, 
Burgh, Grattan ; the bar^ no longer a theatre for dreary dull- 



IV INTEODUCTION. 

ness and absurd forms, eclioed to tlie classic words of Bushe, 
and Curran, and Phillips, and Sheil ; then, when the last at- 
temj)t at cbnl war gave way to agitation, there arose the 
great popular orator of the age, Daniel O'Connell, Great at 
the bar, great in the halls of parliament, he was without a 
rival in the popular assembly, where thousands gathered to 
hear his words. Wit, learning, pathos, a love of his country 
and his countrymen springing fi'om the most pure and ex- 
alted patriotism, enabled him to sway the hearts of milhons 
with a magical power, such as probably no other man ever 
possessed. 

To lovers of true eloquence, the works of the great Irish 
orators must be ever an object of study and admiration ; to 
those whose hearts beat in unison with those great masters of 
the art, their works are as dear as they are admired. The name 
and the fame of the great Irish orators can never lose their 
influence ; time cannot dim the lustre of their renown. 

Unfortunately, no collection at aU adequate exists of their 
happiest efforts ; no book exists to be a Household work in 
families, where the old may revive the memory of those past 
glories of their race, where the young, by learning their splen- 
did effusions, may train themselves to true eloquence, exalted 
patriotism, and manly earnestness in a just cause. 

This want the present volume aims to supply. Here stand 
the great soul-stirring orations of O'Connell ; the classic and 
impassioned speeches of Shell ; the magical effusions of Grat- 
tan ; the thrilling eloquence of Curran ; with an array of ora- 
tory from the minor heroes, Phillips, and Emmet, and Burke, 
and Whiteside, and Meagher, and such others as the limits 
necessary to such a work permit. 

It is intended to be aUke for the scholar and the less culti- 
vated, and is presented in an attractive guise that cannot be 
gainsaid. 



CONTENTS. 



FAG£ 

DANIEL O'CONNELL, M. P. : 

Memoir of Mr. O'Connell « 11 

Speech at Limerick, 1812 13 

Eeply to Mr. BeUew, in the Catholic Board, 1813 26 

On requiring Securities from the Oathohcs, 1813. 38 

Speech in Defence of John Magee, July 27, 1813 54 

Speech in the British Catholic Association, on the defeat of the 

Emancipation BiU, May 26, 1825 122 

On the Treaty of Limerick, 1826 140 

Speech at the Bar of the House of Commons, to maintain his 

Eight to sit as Member for Clare 152 

Speech at the second Clare Election 165 

On the Irish Coercion Bill. (House of Commons, February 19, 

1833) 172 

Speech at MuUaghmast Monster Meeting, September, 1843 182 

Speech in his own Defence, at the Irish State Trials, 1844, in 

the Court of Queen's Bench, in Ireland, in the case of the 

Queen vs. Daniel O'ConneU and others 192 

HON. EICHAED LALOE SHEIL : ' 

Memoir of Mr. Shell. 267 

Speech on the Duke of York 269 

In Eeply to Mr. M'Clintock 277 

At the Clare Election 289 

On the Irish Municipal Bill. (House of Commons, February 

22, 1837) 297 

On the Irish Arms BiU. (House of Commons, May 19, 1843) . . 316 
Speech in Defence of John O'Connell, at the Irish State 
Trials, in the Court of Queen's Bench, in Ireland, in 
the case of the Queen vs. Daniel O'ConneU, John O'Con- 
nell, and others 331 

Speech in the House of Commons, on the Irish State Trials, Feb- 
ruary 22, 1844 383 



VI CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

HON. JOHN PHILPOT CUEKAN : 

Memoirof Mr. Curnm 429 

Speech on Peusious, March 13, 1786 431 

On the Trial of Archibald Hamilton Eowau, January 26, 1794. . 434 

In the Same Case, February 4, 1794 470 

On Catholic Emancipation, October 17, 1796 481 

On Parliameutaiy Keform, May 15, 1797 488 

Tlie Case of Peter Finnerty 495 

Trial of Patrick Finney, for High Treason 525 

HON. HENEY GEATTAN : 

Memoir of Mr. Grattan 549 

On Mr. Forbes's Bill to Limit Pensions 541 

Speech in the Debate on Tithes 560 

On the Downfall of Bonaparte 566 

CHAELES PHILLIPS : 

Speech at an Aggregate Meeting of the Eoman Catholics of 

Cork 579 

Speech at a Meeting of the Eoman Catholics of the county and 

city of Dublin .591 

HON. EDMUND BUEKE : 

Election Speech at Bristol, October 13, 1774 608 

On Conciliation with the American Colonies. (House of Com- 
mons) 611 

HON. EICHAED B. SHEEIDAN : 

Speech in Opposition to Pitt's First Income Tax. (House of 

Commons) 617 

EOBEET EMMET : 

Address to the Court, before receiving Sentence of Death 625 

JAMES WHITESIDE : 

Speech at the Irish State Trials, in Defence of Charles Gavan 

Duffy 633 

THOMAS FEANCIS MEAGHEE : 

Speech at Concihation Hall, Dublin, July 28, 184b^ 687 

HON. THOMAS D'AECY McGEE : 

Speech in Quebec, May, 1862 695 

BiOGBAPHicAii Notes 701 



SELECT SPEECHES OF 
DANIEL O'CONNELL, M. P. 



SKETCH OF DANIEL O'CONNELL, M. P. 



Daniel O'Connell, acknowledged leader of the Irish nation for 
the most important period of the nineteenth century, was born at 
a place called Carhan, beside the small post-town of Cahirciveen, 
near the harbor of Valentia, on the coast of Kerry, in 1775. 

After a prehminary course at a school near Cove, he was sent to 
the Continent, and was successively at Louvain, St. Omer and 
Douai, till the French Eevolution compelled his return. One of 
the effects of the European convulsion was a relaxation of bigotry 
in 1792, so as to permit Catholics to become barristers. Seizing 
the o]Dportunity, O'ConneU, in 1794, entered himself at the Middle 
Temple, and was called to the bar in the memorable year when his 
country made her last fearful effort to free herself from the galHng 
yoke of centuries. 

It was not the moment for a young untried lawyer to enter the 
field of pubhc affairs ; but when, in 1800, the so-calle d Union, but 
real provinciahzation of Ireland was proposed, O'Connell made his 
first appearance as a pubhc speaker, and organized a meeting of 
Catholics, which, with the brutal Major Sirr and his blood-stained 
soldiery in arms around them, passed bold and intrepid resolutions, 
denouncing that iniquity, which it became henceforward his pur- 
pose through hfe to attempt to undo. That he failed to induce 
English statesmen and the English parliament to forego the advan- 
tage gained by a system of terror, fraud, and bribery, is a matter 
of history. Believing England honest, and ready to do what hon- 
esty required, he devoted his hfe to agitation for the Eepeal of the 
Union. One great point he gained — Catholic Emancipation, — and 
much that England has since yielded is a result of his labors. 

O'Connell as a barrister, was from the outset remarkably success- 
ful, and rose to a practice of the utmost extent. He rose above 
partisanship in Irish factions, and for all Irishmen, without distinc-- 



10 MEMOIE OF DANIEL o'CONNELL. 

tion of creed or blood, claimed equal privileges. A recent English 
estimate of O'Connell justly says : 

" His style as a pleader was the best perliajDS ever known at the Irish 
bar. Others have been more polished, more elegant, more richly meta- 
lihorical ; but for clear force, for adroit invention, for Demosthenic terse- 
ness, concentrating and controlling Irish fervor, for the impetuous hail- 
storm of words beating down resistance, we doubt whether any speaker 
of a nation justly famed for eloquence has been the master of O'Connell. 
Anecdotes without number are told of his skill with witnesses, of his au- 
dacity with judges, of the nimble turns and unsurmised devices by which 
he snatched verdicts for his clients, and his success as an orator was not 
confined to the bar." 

As an orator of the people, addressing vast crowds of his coun- 
trymen in the densely packed hall or under the canopy of heaven, 
where, inspired by the landscape of his native land, he poured 
forth his torrents of eloquence ; gathering a whole nation under 
his control, he has no equal in history. For more than twenty 
years before Catholic Emancipation the burden of the cause was, 
he justly says, thrown upon him. For more than twenty years, 
there was not a day, of which part was not devoted to working out 
the Catholic cause. He aroused the torpid, sustained the faint- 
hearted, restrained the impulsive, conciliated the great, and in less 
than eight years, by a system of agitation peculiarly his own, 
without deviating a hair's breadth from the principles of peace and 
loyalty, which he always maintained, he saw the gates of the con- 
stitution flung open to the long oppressed Catholics. 

Then the great CathoHc lawyer, the great agitator and popular 
sj)eakei% entered the parliament of the United Kingdom. He soon 
trampled over the feai', coldness and distrust with which he was 
at first received ; and no speaker was heard with moi-e marked 
attention. His bold step in standing for Clare ; his speech at the 
bar of the House, made his name known throughout the world. 
From May, 1829, when he took his seat as Member for Clare, till 
his death, he continued in parHament, representing Kerry, Dubhn 
and Cork at different periods. 

In 1834, he began the Repeal agitation, by moving in parliament 
for a repeal of the Legislative Union, effected in 1800 by such vio- 
lence and fraud. The only answer made in the House was the 
silly one of Peel, "We will not consent to dismember the British 
empire," as though it had been dismembered before the Union. 



MEMOIR OF DANIEL o'CONNELL. 11 

The agitation in Ireland again drew him to his great field, the 
addresses to the people. Honored almost as a sovereign, invested 
with every dignity in their power, he led on the movement, calling- 
meetings of hundreds of thousands, till the government, in alarm, 
in October, 1843, forbade by proclamation the monster meeting at 
Clontarf. 

O'Connell was then arrested with others, on a charge of con- 
spiracy. The old system began, a packed jury, venal judges, 
hired informers, and a verdict was obtained, which the House of 
Lords, with some sense of justice, set aside as a mockery, a delu- 
sion, and a snare. 

Mr. O'Connell's great work was however checked. He had tried 
to convince his countrymen that agitation, the legal and peaceful 
presenting of their grievances, would ultimately obtain justice. 
The government taught the Irish people that this was a delusion ; 
that no sense of justice would ever induce them to yield ; that con- 
cessions to Ireland were to be extorted only from_ their fears. 
O'Connell's pretended conspiracy was a hint to organize a real one. 

Declining health indeed withdrew O'Connell from public life ; 
his former career was but feebly resumed, and setting out in 1847 
on a pilgrimage to Kome, he died at Genoa, on ihe 15th of May. 
His heart was borne to the Eternal City, while his body was con- 
veyed back to the island he loved so well. 



SPEECHES OE DAHEL O'COOTELL, M. P, 



SPEECH AT LIMERICK, 1812. 



I FEEL it iiij duty, as a professed agitator, to address the 
meeting. It is merely in the exercise of my office of agitation, 
that I thmk it necessary to say a few words. For any pur- 
pose of illustration or argument, further discourse is useless : 
all the topics which the present period suggested, have been 
treated of with sound judgment, and a rare fehcity of diction, 
by my respected and talented friend (Mr. Eoche) ; all I shall 
do is, to add a few observations to what has fallen from that 
gentleman ; and whilst I sincerely admire the happy style in 
which he has treated those subjects, I feel deep regret at being- 
unable to imitate his excellent discourse. 

And, first, let me concur with him in congratulating the 
Cathohcs of Limerick on the progress our great cause has 
made since we were last assembled. Since that period our 
cause has not rested for support on the efforts of those alone 
who were immediately interested ; no, our Protestant brethren 
throughout the land have added their zealous exertions for our 
emancipation. They have, with admirable patriotism, evinced 
their desire to concihate by serving us, and I am sure I do but 
justice to the Cathohcs, when I proclaim our gratitude, as 
written on our hearts, and to be extinguished only with our 
hves. 

Nor has the support and the zeal of our Protestant brethren 
been vain and barren. No, it has been productive of great 



14 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL 0'C0N:sELL. 

and solid advantages ; it has procured, for the cause of reli- 
gious Hberty, the respect even of the most bigoted of our op- 
ponents ; it has struck down English prejiidice ; it has con- 
vinced the mistaken honest ; it has terrified the hypocritical 
knaves ; and finally, it has pronomiced for us, by a great and 
triumphant majority, from one of the branches of the legisla- 
ture, the distinct recognition of the propriety and the necessity 
of conceding justice to the great body of the Irish people. 
Let us, therefore, rejoice in our mutual success ; let us re- 
joice m the near approach of fi-eedom ; let us rejoice in the 
prospect of soon shaking off our chains, and of the speedy ex- 
tinction of our grievances. But above all, let us rejoice at the 
means by which these happy effects have been produced ; let 
us doubl}^ rejoice, because they afford no triumph to any part 
of the Irish nation over the other — that they are not the re- 
sult of any contention among ourselves ; but constitute a vic- 
tory, obtained for the Catholics by the Protestants — that they 
prove the liberality of the one, and require the eternal grati- 
tude of the other — that they prove and promise the eternal 
dissolution of ancient animosities and domestic feuds, and af- 
ford to every Christian and to every patriot, the cheering cer- 
tainty of seeing peace, harmony, and benevolence prevail in 
that country, where a wicked and perverted policy has so long 
and so fataUy propagated and encouraged dissension, discord, 
and rancor. 

* We owe it to the liberality of the Irish Protestants — to the 
zeal of the Irish Presbyterians — ^to the friendly exertion of the 
Irish Quakers ; we owe, to the cordial re-union of every sect 
and denomination of Irish Christians, the progress of our cause. / 
They have procured for us the solemn and distinct promise 
and pledge of the House of Commons — they almost obtained 
for us a similar declaration from the House of Lords. It was 
lost by the petty majority of one — it was lost by a majority, not 
of those who hstened to the absurd prosings of Lord Eklon, 
to the bigoted and turbid declamation of that English Chief 
Justice, whose sentiments so forcibly recall the memory of the 
star-chamber ; not of those who were able to compare the va- 
pid or violent folly of the one party, with the statesman- 
like sentiments, the profound arguments, the s^^lendid elo- 



SPEECH AT LIMEEICK. 15 

quence of tlie Marquis Wellesley. Not of tliose who heard 
the reasonings of our other iUustrions advocates ; but by 
a majority of men who acted upon preconceived opinions, or, 
from a distance, carried into effect their bigotry, or, perhaps, 
v/orse propensities — who availed themselves of that absurd 
privilege of the peerage, which enables those to decide who 
have not heard — which permits men to pronounce upon sub- 
jects they have not discussed — and allows a final determina- 
tion to precede argument. 

It was not, however, to this privilege alone, that our want 
of success was to be attributed. The very principle upon 
which the present administration has been formed, was brought 
into immediate action, and with success ; for, in the latter 
periods of the present reign, every administration has had a 
distinct principle upon which it was formed, and which serves 
the historian to explain all its movements. Thus, the princi- 
ple of the Pitt administration was — to deprive the people of ail 
share in the government, and to vest all power and authority 
in the crown. In short, Pitt's vievrs amounted to unqualified 
despotism. This great object he steadily pursued through his 
ill-starred career. It is true he encouraged commerce, but it 
was for the purposes of taxation ; and he used taxation for 
the purposes of corruption ; he assisted the merchants, as long 
as he could, to grow rich, and they lauded him ; he bought 
the people with their own money, and they praised him. Each 
succeeding day produced some new inroad on the constitu- 
tion ; and the alarm which he excited, by reason of the bloody 
workings of the French revolution, enabled him to rule the 
land with uncontrolled sway ; he had bequeathed to his suc- 
cessor the accumulated power of the crown — a power which 
must be great, if it can sustain the nonentities of the present 
administration. 

The principle of Pitt's administration was despotism — the 
principle of Perceval's administration was peculating bigotry — 
bigoted peculation ! In the name of the Lord he plundered 
the people. Pious and enhghtened statesman ! he would take 
their money only for the good of their souls. 

The principle of the present administration is still more ob- 
vious. It has unequivocally disclosed itself in all its move- 



16 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

ments — it is simple and single — it consists in falsehood. False- 
liood is the bond and link that connects this ministry in ofl&ce. 
Some of them pretend to be our fi-iends — you know it is not 
true — they are only our worse enemies for the hypocrisy. 
They declare that the Catholic question is no longer opposed 
by the cabinet — that it is left to the discretion of each indi- 
vidual retainer. The fact is otherwise — and their retainers, 
though not commanded, as formerly, are carefully advised to 
vote against us. 

The minister, Lord Castlereagh, is reported to have said in 
the House of Commons, that in the year 1797 and 1798, there 
was no torture in Ireland, to the knowledge of government ! Is 
it really possible that such an assertion was used ? You hear 
of it with astonishment. All Ireland must shudder, that any 
man could be found thus to assert. Good God ! of what mate- 
rials must that man be made who could say so ? I restrain my 
indignation — I withhold all expressions of surprise — the simple 
statement that such an assertion was used, exceeds, in reply, the 
strongest language of reprobation. But there is no man so stu- 
pid as not to recognize the principle which I have so justly at- 
tributed to this administration. 

What ! No torture ! Great God ! No tortui'e ! Within the 
walls of your city was there no tortiu^e ? Could not Colonel 
Yerekerhave informed Lord Castlereagli, that the lash resound- 
ed in the streets even of Limerick, and that the human groan as- 
sailed the wearied ear of humanity ? Yet I am ready to give 
the gallant colonel every credit he deserves ; and, therefore, 
I recall to your grateful recollection the day when he 
risked his life to punish one of the instruments of torture. 
Colonel Vereker can tell whether it be not true, that in the 
streets of your city, the servant of his relation, Mrs. Eosslewen, 
was not tortured — whether he was not tortured first, for the 
crime of having expressed a single sentiment of compassion, 
and next because Colonel Vereker interfered for him. 

But there is an additional fact which is not so generally known, 
which, perhaps. Colonel Vereker himself does not know, and 
which I have learned from a highly respectable clergyman, 
that this sad victim of the system of torture, which Lord 
Castlereagh denied, was, at the time he was scourged, in an in- 



SPEECH AT LIMEEICK. 17 

firm state of health. — that tlie flogging inflicted on him deprived 
him of all understanding, and that within a few months he 
died insane, and without having recovered a shadow of reason. 

But why, out of the myriads of victims, do I select a soHtary 
instance ? Because he was a native of your city, and his only 
offence an expression of compassion. I might tell you, did you 
not akeady know it, that in Dubhn there were, for weeks, three 
permanent triangles, constantly supplied with the victims of a 
promiscuous choice made by the army, the yeomanry, the police 
constables, and the Orange lodges ; that the shrieks of the tor- 
tured must have literally resounded in the state apartments of 
the Castle ; and that along by the gate of the Castle yard, a hu- 
man being, naked, tarred, feathered, with one ear cut off, and 
the blood streaming from his lacerated oack, has been hunted 
by a troop of barbarians ! 

Why do I disgust you with these horrible recollections ? You 
want not the proof of the principle of delusion on which the pre- 
sent administration exists. In your own affairs you have abun- 
dant evidence of it. The fact is, that the proxies in the Lords 
would never have produced a majority even of one against Lord 
Wellesley's motion, but for the exertion of the vital principle of 
the administration. The ministry got the majority of one. The 
pious Lord Eldon, with all his conscience and his calculations, 
and that immaculate distributor of criminal justice. Lord Ellen- 
borough, v/ere in a majority of one. By what holy means think 
you ? Why, by the aid of that wliich cannot be described in 
dignified language — ^by the aid of a lie — a false, positive, pal- 
pable lie ! 

This manoeuvre was resorted to — a scheme worthy of its 
authors — they had perceived the effects of the manly and dig- 
nified resolutions of the 18th of June. These resolutions had 
actually terrified our enemies, whilst they cheered those noble 
and illustrious friends who had preferred the wishes and wants 
of the people of Ireland to the gratification of paltry and dis- 
graceful minions. The manoeuvre — the scheme, was calcu- 
lated to get rid of the effect of those resolutions, nay, to turn 
their force against us, and thus was the pious fraud effected. 
There is, you have heard, a newspaper, in the permanent pay 
of peculation and corruption, printed in London, under the 



18 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL o'CONNELL. 

name of the Courier, a paper worthy the meridian of Constan- 
tinople, at its highest tide of despotism. This paper was di- 
rected to assert the receipt of a letter from Dublin, from 
excellent authority, declaring, I know not how many peers, 
sons of peers, and baronets had retracted the resolutions of 
the 18th of June ; that those resolutions were carried by sur- 
prise, and that they had been actually rescinded at a subse- 
quent meeting. 

Never did human baseness invent a more gross imtruth; 
never did a more unfounded lie fall from the father of false- 
hood ; never did human tm-pitude submit to become the vehicle 
of so "glaring" a dereliction fi-om truth. But the Courier 
received its pay, and it was ready to earn the wages of its pros- 
titution. It did so — it ]3ublished the foul falsehoods with the 
full knowledge of their falsehood ; it pubhshed them in two edi- 
tions, the day before and the day of the debate — at a period 
when inquiry was useless — when a contradiction from author- 
ity could not arrive ; at that moment this base trick was played, 
through the intervention of that newspaper, upon the British 
pubHc ! 

Will that pubhc go too far when they charge this impure 
stratagem on those whose purposes it served ? Why, even in 
this country, the administration deems it necessary to give, for 
the support of one miserable paper, two places — one of five, 
and the other of eight hundred a year — the stamp duty remit- 
ted — the proclamations jiaid for as advertisements — and a per- 
manent bonus of one thousand pounds per annum ! If the 
bribe here be so high, what must it be in England, where 
the toil is so much greater ? And, think you, then, that the 
Cornier pubhshed, unsanctioned by its paymasters, this useful 
lie? 

I come now to the next stage in the system of delusion ; it 
is that which my friend, Mr. O'Neil, has noticed. He has pow- 
erfully exposed to you the absurdity of crediting the ministe- 
rial newspapers, when they informed you that the member for 
Limerick had stated in the House of Commons, that the com- 
mercial interests of Limerick were opposed to the Catholic 
claims. Sir, for my part, I entirely agree with Mr. O'Neil ; I 



SPEECH AT LIMEEICK. • 19 

man, and, therefore, a man of truth ; he is probably a pleasant 
friend, and he has those manly traits about him, which make it 
not unpleasant to oppose him as an enemy ; I hke the candor 
of his character, and our opposition to him should assume the 
same frankness, and openness, and perfect determination. He 
well knows that a great part of the commercial interests of 
Limerick is in the hands of the Catholics — that the Quakers 
of Limerick, who possess almost the residue of trade, are 
friendly to us, and that, with the exception of the " tag, rag, 
and bob -tail " of the corporation, there is not to be found 
amongst the men who ought to be his constituents a single ex- 
ception to Hberality. 

There remains another delusion ; it is the darling deception 
of this ministry — that which has reconciled the toleration of 
Lord Castlereagh with the intolerance of Lord Liverpool ; it is 
that which has sanctified the connection between both, and the 
place-procuring, prayer-mumbhng Wilberforce ; it consists in 
sanctions and securities. The Catholics may be emancipated, 
say ministers in pubHc, but they must give securities ; by 
securities, say the same ministers in private, to their support- 
ing bigots, we mean nothing definite, but something that shall 
certainly be inconsistent with the Popish religion — nothing 
shall be a security which they can possibly concede — and we 
shall deceive them and secure you, whilst we carry the air of 
liberality and toleration. 

And can there be any honest man deceived by the cant and 
cry for securities ? — is there any man that believes that there 
is safety in oppression, contumely, and insult, and that secu- 
rity is necessary against protection, liberahty and concihation ? 
— does any man really suppose, that there is no danger from 
the continuance of unjust grievance and exasperating intoler- 
ance ; and that security is wanting against the effects of justice 
and perfect'toleration ? "Who is it that is idiot enough to be- 
lieve, that he is quite safe in dissension, disunion, and animos- 
ity; and wants a protection against harmony, benevolence, and 
charity ? — ^that in hatred there is safety — ^in affection, ruin ? — 
that now, that we are excluded from the constitution, we may 
be loyal — but that if we were entrusted, personally, in its 
safety, we shall wish to destroy it ? 



20 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

But this is a pitiful delusion : there was, indeed, a time, 
when " sanctions and securities " might have been deemed 
necessary — when the Cathohc was treated as an enemy to man 
and to God — when his property was the prey of legahzed plun- 
der — his religion and its sacred ministers, the object of legal- 
ized j)ersecntion ! — when, in defiance and contempt of the dic- 
tates of justice, and the faith of treaties — and I attest the ven- 
erable city, in Avliich I stand, that solemn treaties were basely 
violated — the EngHsh faction in the land turned the Protestant 
into an intolerant and murderous bigot, in order that it might, 
in security, plunder that very Protestant, and oppress his and 
owl common coimtry ! Poor neglected Ireland ! At that pe- 
riod, securities might be supposed Avanting ; the people of Ire- 
land — the Catholic population of Ireland were then as brave 
and as strong, comparatively, as they are at present ; and the 
country then afforded advantages for the desultory warfare of 
a valiant peasantry, which, fortunately, have since been ex- 
ploded by increasing cultivation. 

At the period to which I allude, the Stuart family were still 
in existence ; they possessed a strong claim to the exaggerating 
allegiance and unbending fidehty of the Irish people. Every 
right that hereditary descent could give the royal race of Stu- 
art, they possessed — in private hfe, too, they were endeared to 
the Irish, because they were, even the worst of them, gentle- 
men. But they had stiU stronger claims on the sympathy and 
generosity of the Irish : they had been exalted and were fallen 
— they had possessed thrones and kingdoms, and were then in 
poverty and humiliation. All the enthusiastic sympathies of 
the Irish heart were roused for them — and all the powerful mo- 
tives of personal interest bore, in the same channel, the resto- 
ration of their rights — the triumph of their religion, the resti- 
tution of their ancient inheritances, would then have been the 
certain and immediate consequences of the success of the Stu- 
art family, in their pretensions to the throne. 

At the period to which I aUude, the Catholic clergy were 
bound by no oath of allegiance ; to be a dignitary of the 
Catholic church in Ireland, was a transportable felony — and 
the oath of allegiance was so intermingled with religious 
tenets, that no clergyman or layman of the Catholic persua- 



SPEECH AT LIMEEICK. 21 

sion could possibly take it. At tliat period, tlie Catholic clergy 
were all educated in foreign countries, under tlie eye of tlie 
Pope, and witliin tlie inspection of the house of Stuart. 
From fifty-eight colleges and convents, on the Continent, did 
the Catholic clergy repair to meet, for the sake of their God, 
poverty, persecution, contumely, and, not unfrequently, death, 
in their native land. They were often hunted like wild 
beasts, and never could claim any protection from the law ! 
That— that was a period, when securities might well have 
been necessarj- — when sanctions and securities might well 
have been requisite. 

But what was the fact? — what was the truth which his- 
tory vouches ? Why, that the clergy and laity of the Irish 
Cathohcs, having once submitted to the new government — 
having once plighted their ever unbroken faith to King Wil- 
liam and his successors — ^having once submitted to that great 
constitutional principle, that in extreme cases the will of the 
people is the sole law — that in extreme cases the people 
have the clear and undoubted right to cashier a tyrant, and 
provide a substitute on the throne — the Irish Catholics, having 
fought for their legitimate sovereign, until he, himself, and, not 
they, fled from the strife — adopted, by treaty, his English suc- 
cessor, though not his heir — transferred to that successor, and 
the inheritors of his throne, their allegiance. They have pre- 
served their covenant — with all the temptations and powerful 
motives to disaffection, they fulfilled their part of the social 
contract, even in despite of its violation by the other party. 

How do I prove the continued loyalty of the Cathohcs of 
Ireland under every persecution ? I do not appeal for any 
proofs to their own records, however genuine — I appeal 
merely to the testimony of their rulers and their ene- 
mies — I appeal to the letters of Primate Boulter — to the 
state-papers of the humane and patriotic Chesterfield. 1 
have their loyalty through the admissions of every secretary 
and governor of Ireland, until it is finally and conclusively 
put on record by the legislature of Ireland itself. The relax- 
ing statutes expressly declare, that the penal laws ought to be 
repealed — not from motives of pohcy or growing liberahty, 
but (I quote the words,) " because of the long-continued and 



22 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL o'CONNELL. 

uninterrapted loyalty of the Catholics." This is the consum- 
mation of my proof — and I defy the veriest disciple of the 
doctrine of delusion to overturn it. 

But as the Cathohcs were faithful in those dismal and per- 
secuting periods — when they were exasperated by the ema- 
ciating cruelty of barbarous law and wretched poHcy — as they 
were then faithful, notwithstanding every temporal and every 
religious temptation and excitement to the contrary, is it in 
human credulity to beheve my Lord Castlereagh, when he 
asserts that securities are now necessary ? Now, that the iU- 
fated house of Stuart is extinct — and had it not been extinct 
I should have been silent as to what theii" claims were — now, 
that the will of the people, and the right of hereditary succes- 
sion are not to be separated — now, that the Catholic clergy 
are educated in Ireland and are all bound by then' oaths of 
allegiance to that throne and constitution, which, in the room 
of persecution, gives them protection and security — now, that 
ah claims upon forfeited jDroperty are totally extinguished 
in the impenetrable night of obscurity and oblivion — now, that 
the Catholic nobility and gentry are in the enjoyment of many 
privileges and franchises, and that the full participation of the 
constitution opens upon us in close and cheering prospect — • 
shall we be told that securities are now expedient, though 
they were heretofore unnecessary ? Oh ! it is a base and das- 
tardly insult upon our understandings, and on our principles, 
and one which each of us would, in private hfe, resent — as in 
pubhc we proclaim it to the contempt and execration of the 
universe. 

Long as I have trepassed on you, I cannot yet close : I have 
a word to address to you upon your own conduct. The repre- 
sentative for your city. Colonel Yereker, has openly opposed 
yovu' liberties — he has opposed even the consideration of your 
claims. You are beings, to be sure, with human countenances, 
and the hmbs of men — but you are not men — the iron has en- 
tered into your souls, and branded the name of slave uj^ou 
them, if you submit to be thus trampled on ! His opposition to 
you is decided — meet him with a similar, and, if possible, a 
superior hostility. You deserve not freedom, you, citizens of 
Limerick, with the monuments of the valor of your ancestors 



SPEECH AT LIMEBICK. 23 

around you — you are less than men, if my feeble tongue be re- 
quisite to rouse you into activity. Your city is, at present, 
nearly a close borough — do but wiU it, and you make it free. 

I know legal obstacles have been thrown in your way — I 
know that, for months past, the Kecorder has sat alone at the 
sessions — that he has not only tried cases, in the absence of any 
other magistrate, which he is not authorized by. law to do, but 
that he has solely opened and adjourned the sessions, which, in 
my opinion, he is clearly unwarranted in doing ; he has, by this 
means, I know, delayed the registry of your freeholds, because 
two magistrates are necessary for that pm^pose : I have, howev- 
er, the satisfaction to tell you, that the Court of King's Bench 
wiU, in the next term, have to determine on the legality of his 
conduct, ^nd of that of the other charter magistrates, who have 
banished themselves, I understand, from the Sessions Gou.rt, 
since the registry has been spoken of ! They shall be served 
with the regular notices ; and, depend upon it, this scheme 
cannot long retard you. 

I speak to you on this subject as a lawyer — ^you can best 
judge in what estimation my opinion is amongst you — ^but 
such as it is, I pledge it to you, that you can easily obviate the 
present obstacles to the registry of your freeholds. I can also 
assure you that the constitution of your city is perfectly free — 
that the sons of freemen, and all those who have served an ap- 
prenticeship to a freeman, are aU entitled to their freedom, and 
to vote for the representation of your city. 

I can tell you more : that if you bring yom' candidate to a 
poU, your adversary wiU be deprived of any aid from non-res- 
ident or occasional freemen ; we will strike off his list the free- 
men from Gort and Galway, the freemen from the band, and 
many from the battalion of the city of Limerick militia. 

In short, the opening of the borough is a matter of little 
difficulty. If you wiU but form a committee, and coUect 
funds, in your opulent city, youwiU soon have a representative 
ready to obey your voice — you cannot want a candidate. If 
"the emancipation bill passes next sessions, as it is so likely to 
do, and that no other candidate offers, I myself will bring 
your present number to the poll. I probably will have little 
chance of success — but I will have the satisfaction of showing 



24 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL o'CONNELL. 

this city, and the county, what the free-born mind might 
achieve if it were properly seconded. 

I conclude by conjuring you to exert yourselves ; waste not 
your just resentments in idle applause at the prospect I open 
to you ; let not the feeling of the moment be calumniated as 
a hasty ebullition of anger ; let it not be transitory, as our 
resentments generally are, but let us remember ourselves, our 
children and our country ! 

Let me not, however, close, without obviating any calumny 
that may be flung upon my motives. I can easily pledge my- 
self to you that they are disinterested and pure — I trust they 
are more. My object in the attainment of emancipation is in 
nothing personal, save in the feelings which parental love 
inspires and gratifies. I am, I trust, actuated by that sense 
of Christianity which teaches us that the first duty of our 
rehgion is benevolence and universal charity ; I am, I know, 
actuated by the determination to rescue our common country 
from the weakness, the insecurity, which dissension and reli- 
gious animosity produce and tend to perpetuate ; I wish to 
see the strength of the island — this unconquered, this uncon- 
querable island — combined to resist the mighty foe of free- 
dom, the extinguisher of civil liberty, who rules the Con- 
tinent from Petersburgh to the verge of the Irish bayo- 
nets in Spain. It is his interest, it is a species of duty 
he owes to his family — to that powerful house which he 
has established on the ruins of the thrones and domina- 
tions of Europe — to extinguish, forever, representative and 
popular government in these countries ; he has the same 
direct intent which the Eoman general had to invade our be- 
loved country — " Ut libertas veluti et conspectu." His power 
can be resisted only by combining your physical force with 
your enthusiastic and undaunted hearts. 

There is liberty amongst you stiU. I could not talk as I 
do, of the Liverpools and Castlereaghs, of his court, even if 
he had the foUy to employ such things — ^I wish he had ; you 
have the protection of many a salutary law — of that palla- 
dium of personal hberty — the trial by jury. I wish to ensure 
your Uberties, to measure your interests on the present order 
of the state, that we may protect the very men that oppress us. 



SPEECH AT LIMERICK. 25 

Yes, if Ireland be fairly roused to tlie battle of the country 
and of freedom, aU is safe. Britain has been often conquered : 
the Romans conquered her — the Saxons conquered her — 
the Normans conquered her — in short, whenever she was in- 
vaded, she was conquered. But our country was never sub- 
dued ; we never lost our hberties in battle, nor did we ever 
submit to armed conquerors. It is true, the old inhabitants 
lost their country in piece-meal, by fraud and treachery ; they 
rehed upon the faith of men, who never, never observed a 
treaty with them, until a new and mixed race has sprung up, 
in dissension and discord ; but the Irish heart and soul still 
predominate and pervade the sons of the oppressors them- 
selves. The generosity, the native bravery, the innate fidelity, 
the enthusiastic love of whatever is great and noble — those 
splendid characteristics of the Irish mind remain as the im- 
perishable relics of our country's former greatness — of that il- 
lustrious period, when she was the hght and the glory of barbar- 
ous Europe — -when the nations around sought for instruction 
and example in her numerous seminaries — and when the civil- 
ization and religion of all Europe were preserved in her alone. 

You will, my friends, defend her — you may die, but you 
cannot yield to any foreign invader. Whatever be my fate, I 
shall be happy, whilst I Hve, in re"\dving amongst you the love 
and admiration of your native land, and in calling upon Irish- 
men — no matter how they may worship their common God — 
to sacrifice every contemptible prejudice on the altar of their 
common country. For myself, I shall conclude, by expressing 
the sentiment that throbs in my heart — I shall express it in 
the language of a young bard of Erin, and my beloved friend, 
whose delightful muse has the sound of the ancient min- 
strelsy — 

" Still slialt thou be my midniglit dream — 
Thy glory still my waking theme ; 
And ev'ry thought and wish of mine, 
Unconquered Erin, shall be thine !" 



26 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL o'CONNELL. 

REPLY TO ME. BELLEW, 
IN THE CATHOLIC BOAKD, 1813. 

At this late hour, and in the exhausted state of the meet- 
ing, it requires all the impulse of duty to overcome my de- 
termination to allow the debate to be closed without any re- 
ply ; but a speech has been delivered by the learned gentle- 
man (Mr. Bellew), which I cannot suffer to pass without fur- 
ther answer. 

My eloquent friend, Mr. O'Gorman, has abeady powerfully 
exposed some of its fallacies ; but there were topics involved in 
that speech which he has not touched upon, and which, it 
seems to me, I owe it to the Catholics and to Ireland to at- 
tempt to refute. 

It was a speech of much talent, and much labor and prepar- 
ation. 

Mr. Bellew declared that he had spoken extempore. 

Well, (said Mr. O'Connell,) it was, certainly, an able speech, 
and we shall see whether this extempore effort of the learned 
gentleman will appear in the newspapers to-morrow, in the 
precise words in which it was uttered this day. I have no 
sldll in prophecy, if it does not happen ; and if it does so hap- 
pen, it will certainly be a greater miracle than that the learned 
gentleman should have made an artful and ingenuous, though, 
I confess, I think a very mischievous speech, without prepara- 
tion. 

I beg to say, that, in replying to him and to the other 
supporters of the amendment, I mean to speak with great 
personal respect of them ; but that I feel myself bound to 
treat their arguments with no small degree of reprehension. 
The learned gentleman naturally claims the gTeater part of 
my attention. The ingenuity with which he has, I trust, 
gratuitously advocated our bigoted enemies, and the abun- 
dance in which he has dealt out insinuations against the 
Cathohcs of Ireland, entitle his discourse to the first place 
in my reprobation. Yet I shall take the liberty of saying a 
passing word of the other speakers, before I arrive at him ; 



EEPLY TO ME. BELLEW. 27 

lie sliall be last, but I promise liim, not least in my consid- 
eration. 

Tlie opposition to tlie general vote of thanks to tlie bisliops 
was led by my friend, Mr. Hnssey. I attended to his speech 
with that regard which I always feel for anything that comes 
from him ; I attended to it in the expectation of hearing from 
his shrewd and distinct mind something like argument or rea- 
soning against this expression of gratitude to our prelates. 
But, my lord, I was entirely disappointed ; argument there was 
not any— reasoning there was none ; the sum and substance of 
his discourse was hterally this, that he (Mr. Hussey) is a man 
of a prudent and economical turn of mind, that he sets a great 
value on everything that is good, that praise is excellent, and, 
therefore, he is disposed to be even stingy and niggard of it ; 
that my motion contains four times too much of that exceUent 
article, and he, therefore, desires to strike off three parts of my 
motion, and thinks that one quarter of his praise is full enough 
for any bishops, and this the learned gentleman calls an 
amendment. 

Mr. Bagot came next, and he told us that he had made a 
speech but a fortnight ago, which we did not understand, and 
he has now added another which is unintelligible ; and so, be- 
cause he was misrmderstood before, and cannot be compre- 
hended at present, he concludes, most logically, that the bish- 
ops are wrong, and that he and Mr. Hussey are right. 

Sir Edward Bellew was the next advocate of censure on the 
bishops ; he entertained us with a sad specimen of minor po- 
lemics, and drew a learned and lengthened distinction between 
essential and non-essential discipline ; and he insisted that by 
vhtue of this distinction, that which was called schism by the 
Cathohc prelates, could be changed into orthodoxy by an Irish 
baronet. This distinction between essential and non-essential, 
must, therefore, be very beautiful and beautifying. It must 
be very sublime, as it is very senseless, unless, indeed, he 
means to tell us, that it contains some secret allusion to our 
enemies. For example, that the Duke of Richmond affords 
an instance of the essential, whilst my Lord Manners is plainly 
non-essential ; that Paddy Duigenan is essential in perfec- 
tion, and the foppish Peel is, in nature, without essence ; that 



28 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

Jack Giffard is, surely, of the essential breed, whilst Mr. 
Willy Saurin is a dog of a different color. 

Such, I presume, is the plain Enghsh of the worthy baron- 
et's dissertation. Translated thus, it clearly enough aUudes to 
the new commission ; but it woidd be more difficult to show 
how it applied in argument against my motion. I really did 
not expect so whimsical an opposition from the honorable bar- 
onet. If there be any feeling of disappointment about him for 
the rejection of the double Veto bill, he certainl}' ought not to 
take revenge on the Board, by bestowing on us aU the tedious- 
ness of incomprehensible and insane theology. I altogether 
disclaim reasoning with him, and I fi-eely consent that those 
who relish his authority as a theologian, should vote against 
the prelates. 

And, now, I address myseK to the learned brother of the 
theological baronet. He began by taking great merit to him- 
self, and demanding great attention from you, because he says 
that he has so rarely addressed you. You should yield to him, 
he says, because he so seldom requires your assent. It reminds 
me of the prayer of the English officer before battle. " Great 
Lord," said he, " during the forty years I have hved, I never 
troubled you before with a single prayer. I have, therefore, a 
right, that you should grant me one request, and do just as I 
desire, for this once." Such was the manner in which the 
learned gentleman addressed us ; he begs you will confide in 
his zeal for your interests, because he has hitherto confined 
that zeal to his own. He desires that you wiU. rely upon 
his attention to your affairs because he has been heretofore inat- 
tentive to them; and that you may depend on his anxiety 
for Catholic Emancipation, inasmuch as he has abstained from 
taking any step to attain that measure. 

Quite different are my humble claims on your notice — quite 
different are the demands I make on your confidence. I hum- 
bly solicit it because I have sacrificed, and do, and ever will 
sacrifice, my interest to yours — because I have attended to the 
varying posture of yoiu' affairs, and sought for Catholic Eman- 
cipation with an activity and energy proportioned to the great 
object of our pursuit. I do, therefore, entreat your attention, 
whilst I unravel the spider-web of sophistry with which the 



REPLY TO MR. BELLEW. 29 

learned gentleman lias this day souglit to embarrass and dis- 
figure your cause. 

His discourse was divided into three principal heads. First, 
he charged the Catholic prelates with indiscretion. Secondly, 
he charged them with error. And lastly, he charged the Cath- 
ohcs with bigotry ; and with the zeal and anxiety of an hired 
advocate, he gratuitously vindicated the intolerance of our op- 
pressors. I beg your patience, whilst I follow the learned 
gentleman through this threefold arrangement of Ms subject. 
I shall, however, invert the order of his arrangement, and be- 
gin with his third topic. 

His argument, in support of the intolerants, runs thus. 
First, he alleges that the Cathohcs are attached to their 
religion with a bigoted zeal. I admit the zeal but I utterly 
deny the bigotry. He seems to think I overcharge his state- 
ment ; perhaps I do ; but I feel confident that, in substance, 
this accusation amounted to a direct charge of bigotry. 
Well, having charged the Catholics with a bigoted attach- 
ment to their church, and having truly stated our repug- 
nance to any interference on the part of the secretaries of 
the Castle with our prelates, he proceeded to insist that those 
feelings on our part justified the apprehensions of the Pro- 
testants. The Cathohcs, said Mr. Bellew, are alarmed for 
their church ; why should not the Protestants be alarmed also 
for theirs ? The Catholic, said he, desires safety for his reli- 
gion ; why should not the Protestant require security for his ? 
When you. Catholics, express your anxiety for the purity of 
your faith (adds the learned advocate), you demonstrate the 
necessity there is for the Protestant to be vigilant for the pre- 
servation of his belief ; and hence, Mr. Bellew concludes, that 
it is quite natural, and quite justifiable in the Liverpools and 
Eldons of the Cabinet, to invent and insist upon guards and 
securities, vetoes, and double vetoes, boards of control, and 
commissions for loyalty. 

Before I reply to this attack upon us, and vindication of our 
enemies, let me observe, that, however groundless the 
learned gentleman may be in argument, his friends at the 
Castle will, at least, have the benefit of boasting, that such 
assertions have been made by a Catholic, at the Cathohc Board. 



30 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

And, now, see liow futile and unfounded his reasoning is ; 
lie says, that our disKke to the proposed commission justifies 
the suspicion in which the plan of such commission originated ; 
that our anxiety for the preservation of our church vindicates 
those who deem the proposed arrangement necessary for the 
protection of theirs — a mode of reasoning perfectly true, and 
perfectly applicable, if we sought any interference with, or 
control over, the Protestant Church. If we desu'ed to form 
any board or commission to control or to regulate the appoint- 
ment of their bishops, deans, archdeacons, rectors, or curates ; 
if we asked or required that a single Catholic should be con- 
sulted upon the management of the Protestant Church, or of 
its revenues or privileges ; then, indeed, wordd the learned 
gentleman be right in his argument, and then would he have, 
by our example, vindicated our enemies. 

But the fact does not bear him out ; for we do not seek, 
nor deske, nor would we accept of, any kind of interference 
with the Protestant Church. "We disclaim and disavow any 
kind of control over it. We ask not, nor would we allow, 
any Catholic avithority over the mode of appointment of their 
clergy. Nay, we are quite content to be excluded for ever 
fi'om even' advising his Majesty, with respect to any matter 
relating to or concerning the Protestant Church — its rights, its 
properties, or its privileges. I will, for my own part, go much 
further ; and I do declare, most solemnly, that I would feel 
and express equal, if not stronger repugnance to the inter- 
ference of a Cathohc with the Protestant Church, than that I 
have expressed and do feel to any Protestant interference with 
ours. In opposing theu' interference with us, I content my- 
self with the mere war of words. But if the case were re- 
versed — if the Cathohc sought this control over the rehgion 
of the Protestant, the Protestant should command my heart, 
my tongue, my arm, in opposition to so unjust and insulting a 
measure. So help me God ! I would in that case not only 
feel for the Protestant and speak for him, but I would fight 
for him, and cheerfully sacrifice my life in defence of the great 
principle for which I have ever contended — ^the principle of 
universal and complete rehgious hberty. 

Then, can any thing be more absm'd and imtenable than the 



REPLY TO MR. BELLEW. 3] 

argument of the learned gentleman, wlien you see it stripped 
of the false coloring he has given it ? It is absurd to say, 
that merely because the Catholic desires to keep his religion 
free, the Protestant is thereby justified in seeking to enslave it. 
Eeverse the position and see whether the learned gentleman 
will adopt or enforce it. The Protestant desires to preserve 
his religion free ; would that justify the Cathohc in any at- 
tempt to enslave it ? I will take the learned advocate of in- 
tolerance to the bigoted court of Spain or Portugal, and ask 
him, would he, in the supposed case, insist that the Catholic 
was justifiable. No, my lord, he will not venture to assert 
that the Catholic would be so ; and I boldly tell him that in 
such a case, the Protestant would be unquestionably right, 
the Cathohc, certainly, an insolent bigot. 

But the learned gentleman has invited me to a discussion of 
the question of securities, and I cheerfully follow him. And I 
do, my lord, assert, that the Catholic is warranted in the most 
scrupulous and timid jealousy of any English, for I will not call 
it Protestant, (for it is pohtical, and not, in truth, rehgious) in- 
terference with his church. And I will also assert, and am 
ready to prove, that the Enghsh have no solid or rational pre- 
text for requiring any of those guards, absurdly caUed securi- 
ties, over us or our rehgion. 

My lord, the Irish Catholics never, never broke their faith 
— they never violated their phghted promise to the Enghsh. I 
appeal to history for the truth of my assertion. My lord, the 
English never, never observed their faith with us, they never 
performed their pHghted promise ; the history of the last six 
hundred years proves the accuracy of my assertion. I will 
leave the older periods, and fix myself at the Eevolution. More 
than one hundred and twenty years have elapsed since the 
treaty of Limerick ; that treaty has been honorably and 
faithfully performed by the Irish Catholics ; it has been 
foully, disgracefully, and directly violated by the Enghsh. 
English oaths and solemn engagements bound them to 
its performance ; it remains still of force and unperformed ; 
and the ruffian yell of English treachery which accompanied 
its first violation, has, it seems, been repeated even in the sen- 
ate house at the last repetition of the violation of that 



32 SELECT SFEECHES OF DANIEL o'CONNELL. 

treaty. Tliey rejoiced and tliey shouted at the perjuries of 
theu- ancestors — at their; own want of good faith or common 
sense. 

Nay, are there not present men who can tell us, of then' own 
knowledge, of another instance of English treachery? "Was 
not the assent of many of the Catholics to the fatal — oh ! the 
fatal measure of the Union — purchased by the express and 
written promise of Catholic Emancipation, made from author- 
ity by Lord CornwalHs, and confirmed by the prime minister, 
Mr. Pitt ? And has that promise been performed ? or has 
Irish credulity afforded only another instance of English faith- 
lessness? Now, my lord, I ask this assembly whether they 
can confide in English promises ? I say nothing of the solemn 
pledges of individuals. Can you confide in the more than 
punic faith of your hereditary task-masters? or shall we be 
accused of our scrupulous jealousy, when we reject with 
indignation, the contamination of English control over our 
church ? 

But, said the learned advocate (Mr. BeUew), they have a 
right to .demand, because they stand in need of securities. I 
deny the right — I deny the need. There is not any such right 
— there exists no such necessity. What security have they 
had for the century that has elapsed since the violation of the 
treaty of Limerick ? What security have they had during these 
years of oppression and barbarous and bloody legislation? 
What security have they had whilst the hereditary claim of 
the house of Stuart remained ? And surely, all the right that 
hereditary descent could give was vested in that family. Let 
me not be misunderstood. I admit they had no right ; I ad- 
mit that their right was taken away by the people. I freely 
admit that, on the contrary, the people have the clear right 
to cashier base and profligate princes. What security had 
the English from our bishops when England was invaded, 
and the unfortunate but gallant Prince Charles advanced 
into the heart of England, guided by valor, and accompa- 
nied by a handful of brave men, who had, under his com- 
mand, obtained more than one victory ? He was a man hkely 
to excite and gratify Irish enthusiasm ; he was chivalrous and 
brave ; he was a man of honor, and a gentleman ; no violator 



EEPLY TO ME. BELLEW. 33 

of his word ; lie spent not liis time in making liis soldiers ridic- 
ulous witli liorse-tails and white feathers; he did not consume 
his mornings in tasting curious drams, and evenings in gallant- 
ing old women. What security had the Enghsh then ? Wha.t 
security had they against our bishops or our laity, when Amer- 
ica nobly flung off the yoke that had become too heavy to be 
borne, and sought her independence at the risk of her being ? 
What security had they then ? I will tell you, my lord. Their 
security at all those periods was perfect and complete, because 
it existed in the conscientious allegiance of the Cathohcs ; it 
consisted in the duty of allegiance which the Irish Cathohcs 
have ever held, and will, I trust, ever hold sacred ; it consisted 
in the conscientious submission to legitimate authority, however 
oppressive, which our bishops have always preached, and om' 
laity have always practised. 

And now, my lord, they have the additional security of om^ 
oaths, of our ever unviolated oaths of allegiance ; and if they 
had emancipated us, they would have had the additional secu- 
rity of our gratitude and of our personal and immediate inter- 
ests. We have gone through persecution and sorrow ; we 
have experienced oppression and affliction, and yet we have 
continued faithful. How absurd to think that additional secu- 
rity could be necessary to guard against concihation and kind- 
ness ! 

But it is not bigotry that requires those concessions ; they 
were not invented by mere intolerance. The English do not 
dislike us as Catholics — they simply hate us as Irish ; they ex- 
haust their blood and treasure for the Papists of Spain ; they 
have long observed and cherished a close and affectionate aUi- 
ance with the ignorant and bigoted Papists of Portugal ; and 
now they exert every sinew to preserve those Papists from the 
horrors of a foreign yoke. They emancipated the French Pa- 
pists in Canada, and a German Papist is aUowed to rise to the 
first rank in his profession — the army ; he can command not 
only Irish but even Enghsh Protestants. Let us, therefore, be 
just ; there is no such horror of Popery in England as is sup- 
posed ; they have a great dislike to Irish Papists ; but separate 
the qualities — put the filthy whiskers and foreign visage of a 
German on the animal, and the Papist is entitled to high favor 



34 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL o'CONNELL. 

from the just and discriminating English. We fight their bat- 
tles ; we beat their enemies ; we pay their taxes, and we are 
degraded, oppressed and insulted, whilst the Spanish, the 
Portuguese, the French, and the German Papists are courted, 
cherished and promoted. 

I revert now to the learned gentleman's accusation of the 
bishops. He has accused them of error in doctrine and of 
indiscretion in practice. He tells us that he is counsel to the 
college of Majnooth, and, in that capacity, he seems to arro- 
gate to himself much theological and legal knowledge. I con- 
cede the law, but I deny the divinity ; neither can I admit the 
accm-acy of the eulogium which he has pronounced on that 
institution, with its mongrel board of control — half Papist and 
half Protestant. I was indeed at a loss to account for t]ie 
strange want of talent — for the silence of Irish genius which 
has been remarked within the college. I now see it easily ex- 
plained. The incubus of jealous and rival intolerance sits 
upon its walls, and genius, and taste, and talent fly from the 
sad dormitory, where sleeps the spirit of dullness. I have heard, 
indeed, of their Crawleys and their converts, but where or 
when, will that college produce a Magee or a Sandes, a M'Don- 
nell or a GriflGoi ? "When will the warm heart of Ii-ish genius 
exhibit in Maynooth such bright examples of worth and talent 
as those men disclose ? Is it true, that the bigot may rule in 
Trinity College ; the highest station in it may be the reward 
of writing an extremely bigoted and more foohsh pamphlet ; 
but stni there is no conflicting principle of hostile jealousy in 
its rulers ; and therefore Irish genius does not slumber there, 
nor is it smothered as at Maynooth. 

The accusation of eiTor brought against the bishops by the 
learned gentleman, is sustained simply upon his opinion and 
authority. The matter stands thus : — at the one side, we have 
the most Kev. and right Rev. the Catholic prelates of Ireland, 
who assert that there is schism in the proposed arrangement ; 
on the other side, we have the very Rev. the counsel for 
the college of Maynooth, who asserts that there is no schism 
in that arrangement. These are the conflicting authorities. 
The Rev. prelates assert the one ; he, the counsellor, asserts 
the other ; and, as we have not leisure to examine the point 



REPLY TO MR. BELLEW. 35 

here doctrinally, we are reduced to the sad dilemma of 
choosing between the prelates and the lawyer. There may 
be a want of taste in the choice which I make, but I 
confess I cannot but prefer the bishops. I shall, there- 
fore, say with them, there would be schism in the arrange- 
ment, and deny the assertion of the Rev. counsel, that it 
would not be schism. But suppose his reverence, the coun- 
sel for Maynooth, was right, and the bishops wrong, and that 
in the new arrangement there would be no schism, I then say, 
there would be worse ; there would be corruption, and profli- 
gacy, and subserviency to the Castle in it, and its degrading 
effects would soon extend themselves to every rank and class 
of the Cathohcs. 

I now come to the second charge which the learned gentle- 
man, in his capacity of counsel to the college of Maynooth, 
has brought against the bishops. It consists of the high 
crime of "indiscretion." They were indiscreet, said he, in 
coming forward so soon and so boldly. What, when they 
found that a plan had been formed which they knew to be 
schismatic and degrading — when they found that this plan 
was matm^ed, and printed, and brought into parliament, 
and embodied in a bill, and read twice in the House of 
Commons, without any consultation with, and, as it were, in 
contempt of the Cathohcs of Ireland — shall it be said, that it 
was either premature or indiscreet, solemnly and loudly to 
protest against such plan! If it were indiscreet, it was an 
indiscretion which I love and admire — a necessary indiscre- 
tion, unless, perhaps, the learned counsel for Maynooth, may 
imagine that the proper time would not arrive for this protest 
until the bill had actually passed, and all protest should be 
unavaihng. 

No, my lord, I cannot admire this thing called Catholic 
discretion, which would manage our affairs in secret, and de- 
clare our opinions, when it was too late to give them any 
importance. Cathohc discretion may be of value at the Cas- 
tle ; a Cathohc secret may be carried, to be discounted there 
for prompt payment. The learned gentleman may also tell us 
the price that Cathohc discretion bears at the Castle, 
whether it be worth a place, a peerage, or a pension. But, 



36 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL o'CONNELL. 

if it have value and a j)rice for individuals, it is of no 
worth to the Cathohc people. I reject and abjure it as 
applicable to public officers. Our opinions ought to be 
formed dehberatelj, but they should be announced manfully 
and distinctly. We should be despicable, and deserve to con- 
tinue in slavery, if we could equivocate or disguise our senti- 
ments on those subjects of vital importance ; and I call upon 
you to thank the Cathohc prelates, precisely because they had 
not the learned gentleman's quahty of discretion, and that 
they had the real and genuine discretion, which made them 
publish resolutions consistent with their exalted rank and rev- 
erend character, jind most consonant to the wishes and views 
of the Catholic people of Ireland. 

I now draw to a close, and I conjure you not to come to any 
division. Let the amendment be withdrawn by my learned 
fiiend, and let our approbation of our amiable and excellent, 
our dignified and independent prelates, be, as it ought to be, 
unanimous. We want unanimity ; we require to combine in 
the constitutional pursuit of Catholic Emancipation every 
class and rank of the Catholics — the prelate and the peer, the 
country gentleman and the farmer, the peasant and his priest ; 
our career is to begin again ; let our watchword be unanimity, 
and our object be plain and undisguised, as it has been, 
namely, simple Eepeal. Let us not involve or embarrass oui'- 
selves with vetoes, and arrangements, and securities, and 
guards, and pretexts of divisions, and all the implements for 
ministerial corruption, and Castle dominion ; let our cry be 
simple Eepeal. 

It is well — it is very well that the late bill has been rejected. 
I rejoice that it has been scouted. Our sapient friends at 
Cork called it a " Charter of Emancipation." You, my lord, 
called it so ; but, with much respect, you and they are greatly 
mistaken. In truth, it was no charter at all, nor Hke a char- 
ter ; and it would not have emancipated. This charter of 
emancipation was no charter ; and would give no emancipa- 
tion. As a plain, prose-like expression, it was unsupported ; 
and, as a figure and fiction, it made very bad poetry. No, my 
lord, the bill would have insulted your religion, and done 
almost nothing for your liberties ; it would have done nothing 



EEPLY TO ME, BELLEW. 37 

at all for tlie people — it would send a few of our discreet Ca- 
tholics, with their Castle-discretion, into the House of Com- 
mons, but it would not have enabled Catholic peers in Ireland 
to vote for the representative peers ; and thus the blunder 
arose, because those friends, who, I am told, took so much 
trouble for you, examined the act of Union only, and did not 
take the trouble of examining the act regTilating the mode of 
voting for the representative peers. 

The bill would have done nothing for the Catholic bar, save 
the paltry dignity of silk gowns ; and it would have actually 
deprived that bar of the places of assistant-barrister, which as 
the law stands, they may enjoy. It would have done nothing 
in corporations — literally nothing at all ; and when I pressed 
this on Mr. Plunket, and pointed out to him the obstacles to 
corporate rights, in a conference with which, since his return 
to Ireland, he honored me, he informed me — -and informed me 
of course truly — that the reason why the corporations could 
not be further opened, or even the Bank of Ireland mentioned, 
was, because the English would not listen to any violation of 
chartered rights ; and this bill, my lord — this inefficient, use- 
less, and insulting bill — must be dignified with the appellation 
of a " Charter of Emancipation." I do most respectfully en- 
treat, my lord, that the expression may be well considered be- 
fore it is used again. 

And now let me entreat, let me conjure the meeting to ban- 
ish every angry emotion, every sensation of rivalship or o23po- 
sition ; let us recollect that we owe this vote to the unim- 
peached character of our worthy prelates. Even our enemies 
respect them ; and, in the fury of religious and political cal- 
umny, the breath even of hostile and polemical slander has 
not reached them. Shall Cathohcs, then, be found to express 
or even to imply censure ? 

Recollect, too, that your country requires your unanimous 
support. Poor, degraded, and fallen Ireland ! has you, and, I 
may almost say, you alone to cheer and sustain her. Her 
friends have been lukewarm and faint hearted ; her enemies 
are vigilant, active, yeUing, and insulting.. In the name of 
your country, I call on you not to divide, but to consecrate 
your unanimous efforts to her support, till bigotry shaU be 
put to flight, and oppression banished this land for ever. 



38 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 



SPEECH IN 1813 ON EEQUIRING SECURITIES FROM 
THE CATHOLICS. 



Having come here determined to address tliis meeting, I 
avail myself of tliis opportmiitj to solicit jour patience and 
attention. Let me, in the first place, congratulate you on the 
progress which the principle of rehgious liberty has made 
since you last met. It has been greatly advanced by a mag- 
nificenD discovery lately made by the Enghsh in ethics, and 
upon which I also beg leave to congratulate you. It is this : 
Several '^sSigacious Enghshmen have discovered, in the nine- 
teenth century, and more than four hundred years after the 
propagation of science was facihtated by the art of jorinting — 
several sagacious Enghshmen have made this wonderful dis- 
covery in moral philosophy, that a man is not necessarily a 
worse citizen for having a conscience, and that a conscien- 
tious adherence to a Christian rehgion is not an offence deserv- 
ing of degradation or punishment. 

The operation, however, of this discovery had its oppo- 
nents ; like gravitation and the cow-pock, it has been opposed, 
and, for the present, opposed with success ; but the principle 
has not been resisted. Yes, our enemies themselves have 
been forced to concede our right to emancipation. Duigenan, 
and Nichol, and Scott are laughed at — not hstened to ; the 
principle is admitted — the right of hberty of conscience is not 
controverted — your emancipation is certain — it is now only a 
question of terms — it only remains to be seen whether we shall 
be emancipated upon then* terms or upon ours. 

They offer you emancipation, as Cathohcs, if you wiU kindly 
consent, in return, to become schismatics. They offer you hb- 
erty, as men, if you agree to become slaves after a new fash- 
ion — that is, your fi-iends and your enemies have declared that 
you are entitled to Catholic emancijDation and freedom, upon 
the trifling terms of schism and servitude ! 

Generous enemies ! — bountiful fiiends ! Yes, in their boimty 
they resemble the debtor who should address his creditor 



ON EEQUIKING SECUEITIES FROM THE CATHOLICS. 39 

tlius : — " It is true, I owe you XlOO ; I am perfectly well able 
to pay you ; but wliat will you give me if I hand you 6s. Sd. 
in the pound of your just debt, as a final adjustment?" 
" Let us allay all jealousies," continues the debtor — let 
us put an end to all animosities — I will give you one-third 
of what I owe you, if you wiU give me forty shillings in the 
pound of additional value, and a receipt in full, duly stamped 
into the bargain." 

But why do I treat this serious and melancholy subject 
with levity? Why do I jest when my heart is sore and sad? 
Because I have not patience at this modern cant of securities, 
and vetoes, and arrangements, and clauses, and commissions. 
Securities against what ? Not against the irritation and dis- 
like which may and naturally ought to result from prolonged 
oppression and insult. Securities — not against the. conse- 
quences of dissensions, di&trusts, and animosities. Securities 
— not against foreign adversaries. The securities that are re- 
quired from us are against the effects of conciliation and kind- 
ness — against the dangers to be apprehended from domestic 
union, peace, and cordiality. If they do not emancipate us — 
if they leave us ahens and outlaws in our native land — ^if they 
continue our degradation, and aU those grievances that, at 
present, set our passions at war with our duty ; then, they 
have no pretext for asking, nor do they requke any securities ; 
but should they raise us to the rank of Irishmen — should they 
give us an immediate and personal interest in our native land 
— should they share with us the blessings of the constitution 
— should they add to our duty the full tide of our interests and 
affection ; then — then, say they, securities will be necessary. 
Securities and guards must be adopted. State bridles must 
be invented, and shackles and manacles must be forged, lest, 
in the intoxication of new liberty, we should destroy, only be- 
cause we have a greater interest to preserve. 

And do they — do these security-men deserve to be reasoned 
"with ? I readily admit — I readily proclaim Grattan's purity — 
his integrity — his patriotism ; but, in his eagerness to obtain 
for us that hberty, for which he has so long and so zealously 
contended, he has overlooked the absurdity which those men 
fall into, who demand securities against the consequences of 



40 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL o'CONNELL. 

emancipation, whilst tliey look for no securities against tlie 
effects of injustice and contumely. 

Grattan has also overlooked the insult to our understand- 
ings and to our moral feeUngs which this demand for securities 
injflicts. Grattan is mistaken up on tliis topic ; but he is the 
only man who is merely mistaken. The cry for securities has 
been raised, merely to retard the progress of emancipation. 
Canning affects to be our friend, because, since his conduct to 
his colleague, Viscovmt Castlereagh, he has found it difficult to 
obtain a niche in any administration. God preserve us from 
the friendship of Mr. Canning ! I have no apprehension of 
Mr. Canning's enmity ; he was our avowed enemy ; that is, he 
always voted against us, from the moment he got pension or 
place under Pitt, to the time when he was dismissed from office, 
and rendered hopeless of regaining it. And, as for Lord Cas- 
tlereagh, rely on it, that, though he may consent to change one 
kind of degradation for another, he never will consent to your 
attaining your freedom : and was it to obtain the vote of 
Lord Castlereagh that Grattan gave up our honor and our re- 
ligion ? Does Grattan forget — does he forgive the artificer of 
the Union, or the means by which it was achieved ? Does not 
Grattan know that Lord Castlereagh first dyed his country in 
blood, and then sold her. 

But, I repeat it, I have not patience, common patience with 
those men who cry out for securities, and will not see that they 
would obtain real security from the generous concession of 
plain right — from conciliation and kindness ; all reasoning, all 
experience proves that justice to the Catholics ought to be, 
and has been, in the moments of distress and peril, the first 
and best security to the state. I will not stoop to argue the 
theory with any man. I wiU not condescend to enter into an 
abstract reasoning to prove that safety to a government ought 
to result from justice and kindness to the people, but I will 
point out the evidence of facts which demonstrate, that con- 
cession to Lish Catholics has in itself been resorted to, and 
produced security to our government — that they have consid- 
ered and found it to be a security in itself — a safeguard against 
the greatest e^dls and calamities, aud not a cause of danger or 
apprehension. 



ON REQUIEING SECUBITIES FEOM THE CATHOLICS. 41 

Irelandj in tlie connection with England, has but too con- 
stantly shared the fate of the prodigal's dog — I mean no per- 
sonal allusion — she has been kicked in the insolence of pros- 
perity, and she has borne all the famine and distress of ad- 
versity. Ireland has done more — she has afforded an abun- 
dant source of safety and security to England in the midst 
of every adversity ; and at the hour of her calamity, Eng- 
land has had only to turn to Ireland with the offer of friend- 
ship and cordiality, and she has been rewarded by our cordial 
and um^emittiiag succor. 

Trace the history of the penal laws in their leading fea- 
tures, and you will see the truth of my assertion. The capitu- 
lation of Limerick was signed on the 3rd October, 1691. Our 
ancestors, by that treaty, stipulated for, and were promised 
the perfect freedom of their religion, and that no other oath 
should be imposed on Catholics, save the oath of allegiance. 
The Irish performed the entire of that treaty on their part": 
it remains unperformed, as it certainly is of force, in point of 
justice, to this hour, on the part of the English. Even in the 
reign of William, it was violated by that prince, whose gener- 
als and judges signed that treaty — by that prince who himself 
confirmed and enrolled it. 

But he was the same prince that signed the order for the 
horrible, cold-blooded assassination and massacre of the un- 
fortunate Macdonalds of Glencoe ; and if his violation of the 
Limerick treaty was confined to some of the articles, it was 
only because the alteration in the succession, and the ex- 
treme pressure of foreign affairs, did not render it prudent nor 
convenient to offer further injury and injustice to the Irish 
Catholics. 

But the case was altered in the next reign. The power and 
the glory, which England acquired by her achievements, under 
Marlborough — the internal strength, arising from the posses- 
sion of hberty, enabled her to treat Ireland at her caprice, and 
she accordingly poured the full vial of her hatred upon the un- 
fortunate Catholics of Ireland. England was strong and 
proud, and, therefore, unjust. The treaty of Limerick was 
trampled under foot — ^justice, and humanity, and conscience 
were trodden to the earth, and a code of laws inflicted on 



42 SELECT SrEECHES OF DiVNIEL o'CONNELL. 

tlie Irish Catliolics, whicli Montesquieu has well said, ought 
to have been written in blood, and of which you still feel the 
emaciating cruelty — a code of laws which still leave you ahens 
in the land of your ancestors. Aliens! — did I say? Alas! 
you have not the privileges of ahenage ; for tiie alien can insist 
upon having six of his jury of his own nation, whilst you may 
have twelve Orangemen on yours. 

But to return to our own history. The reigns of the First 
and of the Second George passed away ; England continued 
strong ; she persevered in oppression and injustice ; she was 
powerful and respected ; she, therefore, disregarded the suffer- 
ings of the Irish, and increased their chains. The Cathohcs 
once had the presumption to draw up a petition ; it was pre- 
sented to Primate Boulter, then governing Ii'eland. He not 
only rejected it with scorn and without a reply, but treated the 
insolence of daring to complain as a crime, and punished it as 
an offence, by recommending and procuring still more severe 
laws against the Papists, and the more active execution of the 
former statutes. 

But a new era advanced ; the war which George the Sec- 
ond waged on account of Hanover and America, exhausted 
the resources, and lessened, while it displayed, the strength 
of England. In the meantime the Duke of Bedford was 
Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. The ascendency mob of DubHn, 
headed by a Lucas, insulted the Lord Lieutenant with impu- 
nity, and threatened the parliament. All was riot and con- 
fusion within, whilst France had prepared an army and a fleet 
for the invasion of Ireland. Serious danger menaced England. 
The very connection between the countries was in danger. 
The Cathohcs were, for the first time, thought of with favor. 
They were encouraged to address the Lord Lieutenant, and, 
for the first time, their address received the courtesy of a re- 
ply. By this slight civility (the more welcome for its novelty) 
the warm hearts and ready hands of the Irish Catholics were 
purchased. The foreign foe was deterred from attempting to 
invade a country where he could no longer have found a 
friend ; the domestic insurgents were awed into silence ; the 
Catholics and the government, simply by their combination, 
saved the state from its perils ; and thus did the Cathohcs, in 



ON EEQUrRING SECUEITIES FROM THE CATHOLICS. 43 

a period of danger, and upon tlie very first application, and 
in return for no more than kind words, give, what we want 
to give, security to the empire. 

From the year 1759, to the American war, England enjoyed 
strength and peace ; the Catholics were forgotten, or recol- 
lected only for the purposes of oppression. England in her 
strength and her insolence oppressed America ; she persevered 
in an obstinate and absurd course of vexation, until America 
revolted, flew to arms, conquered, and established her inde- 
pendence and her hberty. 

This brings us to the second stage of modem Catholic his- 
tory : for England, having been worsted in more than " one 
battle in America, and having gained victories more fatal 
than many defeats, America, aided by France, having pro- 
claimed independence, the English period for liberahty and 
justice arrived, for she was in distress and difficulty. Dis- 
tracted at home — baffled and despised abroad, she was com- 
pelled to look to Irish resources, and to seek for security in 
Ireland; accordingly, in the year 17 7S, our Emancipation 
commenced ; the Cathohcs were lured into the active service 
of the state by an easy gratuity of a small share of their 
rights as human beings, and they in return gave, what we 
now desire to give, security to the empire. 

The pressure of foreign evils, however, returned ; Spain and 
HoUand joined with France and America ; success in her 
contest with the ^Colonies became daily more hopeless. The 
combined fleets swept the ocean; the Enghsh channel saw 
their superiority ; the Enghsh fleet abandoned for a while the 
dominion of the sea ; the national debt terrified and impover- 
ished the country; distress and difficulty pressed on every 
side, and, accordingly, we arrived at the second stage of Ca- 
tholic Emancipation ; for, in 1782, at such a period as I have 
described, a second statute was passed, enlarging the privi- 
leges of the Catholics, and producing, in their gratitude and 
zeal, that security which we now tender to the sinking vessel 
of the state. 

From 1782 to 1792, was a period of tranquilhty ; the ex- 
penses of the government were diminished, and her commerce 
greatly increased. The loss of America, instead of being an 



4A SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

evil, became an advantage to trade as well as to liberty. Eng- 
land again flourished, and again forgot us. 

In 1792, the Catholics urged their claims, as they had 
more than once done before. But the era was inauspicious to 
them, for England was in prosperity. On the Continent, the 
confederation of German princes, and the assemblage of the 
French princes, with their royaUst followers, the treaty of Pil- 
nitz, and the army of the King of Prussia, gave hope of crush- 
ing and extinguishing France and her Hberties for ever. At 
that moment the Catholic petition was brought before parha- 
meut; it was not even suffered, according to the course of 
ordinary courtesy, to he on the table ; it was rejected with indig- 
nation and with contempt. The head of the La Touche fam- 
ily, which has since produced so many first-rate Irishmen, then 
retained that Huguenot hatred for Cathohcs which is stiU 
cherished by Sauiin, the Attorney-General for Ireland. La 
Touche proposed that the petition should be rejected, and it 
was rejected by a majority of 200 to only 13. 

Fortune, however, changed. The invasion of the Prussians 
was unsuccessful ; the French people worshipping the name, 
as if it were the reality of liberty, chased the Duke of 
Brunswick from their soil ; the King of Prussia, in the Lut- 
trel style, sold the pass ; the German princes were confound- 
ed, and the French princes scattered ; Dumouriez gained the 
battle of Jemappes, and conquered the Austrian Netherlands ; 
the old governments of Em'ope were struck with consterna- 
tion and dismay, and we arrived at the fourth, and hitherto 
the last stage of emancipation ; for, after those events, in 
1793, was passed that act which gave us many valuable polit- 
ical rights— many important privileges. 

The parliament — the same men who, in 1792, would not 
suffer our petition to lie on the table — the men who, in 1792, 
treated us with contempt, in the short space of a few months, 
granted us the elective franchise. In 1792, we were despised 
and rejected; in 1793, we were flattered and favored. The 
reason was obvious ; in the year 1792, England was safe ; in 
1793 she wanted security, and security she found in the 
emancipation of the Cathohcs, partial though it was and hm- 
ited. The spirit of republican frenzy was abroad ; the en- 



ON REQUIRING SECURITIES FROM THE CATHOLICS. 45 

tliusiasm for liberty, even to madness, pervaded tlie public 
mind. The Presbyterians and Dissenters of the North of 
Ireland were strongly infected with that mania ; and had not 
England wisely and prudently bought aU the Catholic nobihty 
and gentry, and the far greater part of the Cathohc people 
out of the market of republicanism, that which fortunately 
was but a rebelUon, would, most assuredly, have been revolu- 
tion. The Presbyterians and Cathohcs would have united, 
and, after wading through the bloody dehrium of a sanguin- 
ary revolution, we should now, in aU likehhood, have some 
mihtary adventurer seated on the throne of our legitimate 
sovereign. 

But, I repeat it, England judged better ; she was just and 
kind, and therefore she has been preserved. She sought for 
security where alone it could be found, and she obtained it. 

Thus, in 1759, England wanted security against the turbu- 
lence of her ascendency faction in Ireland, and against the 
fleet and arms of France ; she was civil and" courteous to the 
Catholics, and the requisite secmdty was the resrdt. 

Thus, in 1778, England wanted security against the effects 
of her own misconduct and misfortunes in America; she 
granted some rights of property to the Irish Cathohcs, and 
the wanted security followed. 

Thus, in 1782, England wanted security against the prodi- 
gality and profligacy of her administration — against the com- 
bined navies of France, Spain, and HoUand ; she conceded 
some further advantages to the Catholics, and she became safe 
and secure. 

Thus, in 1795, England wanted security against the proba- 
ble consequences of the disasters and treachery of the Prus- 
sians — the defeat of the Austrians, and especially against 
the revolutionary epidemic distemper which threatened the 
vitals of the constitution ; she conferred on the Catholics 
some portion of pohtical freedom, and the Catholics have re- 
compensed her, by affording her subsequent security. 

And thus has Emancipation been in all its stages the effect 
of the wants of England, but, at the same time, her resources 
in those wants. In her weakness and decay, Emancipation 
has given her health and strength ; it was always hitherto a 



46 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL o'CONNELL. 

remedy, and not in itself a disease ; it was, in short, her best 
protection and secmity. Away, then, with those idle, those 
absurd demands for control, and dominion over our mode of 
faith. 

Let Grattan learn the sentiments of the Irish people ; let 
him know that we are ready to give the security of our pro- 
perties and our hves to the state ; but we wiU not, we cannot, 
grant away any part of our religion. Before the Union, no 
vetoes, no ari'augements, no inquisitions over our prelates were 
required. 

If our Protestant fellow-countrymen did not ask them, why 
should the English suppose we can grant them to their stupid 
caprice ? But we are ready to give them security ; we are 
ready to secui'e them from foreign foes, and against the possi- 
biUty of domestic dissension. 

Yes, the horn' of your Emancipation is at hand ; you will, 
you must be Emancipated ; not by the operation of any force 
or violence, which are unnecessary, and would be illegal on 
your part, but by the repetition of yom^ constitutional demands 
by petition, and still more by the pressure of circumstances, 
and the great progress of events. Yes, your Emancipation is 
certain, because England wants the assistance of all her peo- 
ple. The dream of dehvering the Continent from the domin- 
ion of Bonaparte has vanished. The idle romance of German 
hberty — who ever heard of German hberty? — is now a cheerless 
vision. The allied Russian and Prassian armies may, perhaps, 
escape, but they have little prospect of victory. The Ameri- 
cans have avenged our outrages on their seamen, by quench- 
ing the meteor blaze of the British naval flag. The war with 
the world — Ed gland, alone, against the world — is in progress. 
We shall owe to her good sense, what ought to be conceded by 
her generosity ; she cannot proceed without our aid ; she 
knows she can command that aid if she will but be just ; she 
can, for liberty, to which we are of right entitled, command 
the affections and the energies of the bravest and finest peo- 
ple in the world ! 

Becollect, too, that the financial distress of England accu- 
mulates. She owes, including the Irish debt, near a milhon of 
milhons. Who is there so extravagant as to suppose, but that 



ON KEQUIRING SECURITIES FROM THE CATHOLICS. 47 

iliere must arrive a period at whicli it will become impossible 
to borrow money, or to pay more iaterest ? Our Irisli debt 
has already exceeded, by nearly two-thirds, our means. "We 
spend sixteen millions annually, and we collect, in revenue, 
about five millions. Our bank puts a paltry impression on 
three penny-worth of silver, and calls it tenpence. In short, 
with taxes increasing, debts accumulating, revenue diminish- 
ing, trade expuing, . paper currency depreciating — who is so 
very blind as not to perceive, that England does and must re- 
quire, the consolidation of all her people in one common cause, 
and in one common interest ? 

The plain path to safety — to security — lies before her. Let 
Irishmen be restored to their inherent rights, and she may 
laugh to scorn the shock of every tempest ; the arrangements 
which the abolition of the national debt may require will 
then be effectuated, without convulsion or disturbance ; and 
no foreign foe will dare to pollute the land of freemen and of 
brothers. 

They have, however, struck out another resource in Eng- 
land ; they have resolved, it is said, to resort to the protec- 
tion of Orange Lodges. That system which has been declared 
by judges from the bench to be iUegal and criminal, and found 
by the experience of the people to be bigoted and bloody — the 
Orange system, which has marked its progress in blood, in 
murder, and in massacre — the Orange system, which has des- 
olated Ireland, and would have converted her into a sohtude, 
but for the interposing hand of Cornwalhs — the Orange system 
with all its sanguinary horrors is, they say, to be adopted in 
England ! 

Its prominent patron, we are told, is Lord Kenyon or Lord 
Yarmouth ; the first an insane rehgionist of the Welsh Jum- 
per sect, who, bounding in the air, imagines he can lay hold 
of a limb of the Deity, hke Macbeth, snatching at the air- 
drawn dagger of his fancy ! He would be simply ridiculous, 
but for the mischievous mahgnity of his holy piety, which de- 
sires to convert Papists from their errors, through the instru- 
mentahty of daggers of steel. Lord Kenyon may enjoy his 
ample sinecures as he pleases, but his folly should not goad to 
madness the people of Ireland. 



48 SELECT SrEECHES OF DANIEL o'CONNELL. 

As to Lord Yarmouth, I need not, indeed I could not, de- 
scribe liim ; and if I could, I would not disgust mjseK with* 
the description ; but if Lord Kenyon or Lord Yarmouth 
have organized the Orange system, I boldly proclaim that he 
must have been bribed by the common enemy. Bigotry is not 
a gratuitous propensity. Giffard gets money for his calum- 
nies and impudence ; so does Duigenan. The English Orange 
patrons must be bribed by France ; let them appeal to their 
private lives to repel my a ccusation. Can that man repel it, 
whose life is devoted to the accumulation of wealth to be 
added to wealth, already excessive and enormous ? — who 
never was suspected of principle or honor? — whose finest 
feelings were always at market for money — who was ready 
to wed disgrace with a rich dowry, and would have espoused 
infamy with a large portion? If such a wretch lives, let 
him become the leader of the Orange banditti. The patron 
is worthy of the institution — the institution is suited to the 
patron. 

You know fuU well that I do not exaggerate the horrors 
which the Orange system has x)roduced, and must produce, if 
revived from authority, in this country. I have, in some of the 
hireling prints of London, read, under the guise of opposing 
adoption of the Orange system, the most unfounded praises of 
the conduct of the Lish Orangemen. They were called loyal, 
and worthy, and constitutional. Let me hold them up in their 
true light. The first authentic fact in their history occurs in 
1795. It is to be found in the address of Lord Gosford, to a 
meeting of the magistrates- of the county of Ai'magh, con- 
vened by his lordship, as governor of that coimty, on the 28th 
of December, 1795. Allow me to read the following passage 
from that address : 

" Gentlemen — Having requested your attendance here this day, it be 
comes my duty to state the grounds ujion which I thought it advisable 
to propose this meeting ; and at the same time to submit to your con- 
sideration a plan which occurs to me as most likely to check the enor- 
mities that have already brought disgrace upon this country, and may 
soon reduce it into deep distress. 

" It is no secret that a persecution, accompanied with all the 
circumstances of ferocious cruelty, which have in all ages distinguished 



ON KEQUIRING SEGUEITIES FROM THE CATHOLICS. 49 

that dreadful calamity, is now raging in this country. Neither age 
nor sex, nor even acknowledged innocence, as to any guilt in the late 
disturbances, is sufficient to excite mercy, much less to afford protection. 

" The only crime which the wretched objects of this ruthless persecu- 
tion are charged with, is a crime, indeed, of easy proof ; it is simply a 
profession of the Roman Catholic faith, or an intimate connection with 
a person professing this faith. A lawless banditti have constituted them- 
selves judges of this new species of deUnquency, and the sentence they 
have denounced is equally concise and terrible. It is nothing less than 
a confiscatiou of all property, and an immediate banishment. It would 
be extremely painful, and surely unnecessary, to detail the horrors 
that are attendant on the execution of so rude and tremendous a pro- 
scription — one that certainlyj exceeds in the comparative number of 
those it consigns to ruin and misery, every example that ancient and 
modern history can supply; for where have we heard, or in what story of 
human cruelties have we read, of half the inhabitants of a populous 
country deprived, at one blow, of the means as well as the fruits of 
their industry, and driven, in the midst of an inclement season, to 
seek a shelter for themselves, and their helpless famihes, where chance 
may guide them ? 

" This is no exaggerated picture of the horrid scenes that are now act- 
ing in this country." 

Here is the first fact in the history of the Orangemen. 
They commenced their course by a persecution with every 
circumstance of ferocious crulelty. This lawless banditti, as 
Lord Gosford called them, showed no mercy to age, nor sex, 
nor acknowledged innocence. And this is not the testimony 
of a man favorable to the rights of those persecuted Catholics ; 
he avows his intolerance in the very address of which I have 
read you a part ; and though shocked at these Orange enor- 
mities, he still exults in his hostihty to Emancipation. 

After this damning fact from the early history of the Or- 
angemen, who can think with patience on the revival or exten- 
sion of this murderous association ? It is not, it ought not, it 
cannot be endured, that such an association should be restored 
to its power of mischief by abandoned and unprincipled cour- 
tiers. But I have got in my possession a document which dem- 
onstrates the vulgar and lowly origin, as well as the traitorous 
and profligate purpose of this Orange society. It has been re- 
peatedly sworn to in judicial proceedings, that the original 
oath of an Orangeman was an oath to exterminate the CathoHcs. 



50 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL o'CONNELL. 

In some years after the society was formed, men of a higher 
class of society became members of it, and being too Avell ed- 
ucated to endure the plain declaration to exterminate, they 
changed the form of the oath to its present shape, but care- 
fuUy retained all the persecuting spirit of the Armagh exter- 
minators. The document I allude to, was x^rinted for the use of 
the Orange Lodges ; it was never intended for any eye but that 
of the imtiated, and I owe it to something better than chance 
that I got a copy of it ; it was priuted by William M'Kenzie, 
printer to the Grand Orange Lodge, in 1810, and is entitled, 
" Eules and Kegulations for the use of all Orange Societies, 
revised and corrected by a Committee of the Grand Orange 
Lodge of L-eland, and adopted by the Grand Orange Lodge, 
January 10th, 1810." I can demonstrate from this document 
that the Orange is a vulgar, a profligate, and a treasonable as- 
sociation. To prove it treasonable, I read the following, which 
is given as the first of their secret articles : — " That we will 
bear true allegiance to his Majesty, his heirs and successors, 
so long as he or they support the Protestant ascendency." 

The meaning is obvious, the Orangeman wiU be loyal just 
so long as he pleases. The traitor puts a limit to his alle- 
giance, suited to what he shall fancy to be meant by the 
words " Protesta-nt ascendency." If the legislature presumes 
to alter the law for the Irish Catholics as it did for the Han- 
overian Catholics, then is the Orangeman clearly discharged 
from his allegiance, and allowed, at the first convenient oppor- 
tunity, to raise a civil war ; ^nd this is what is called a loyal 
association. Oh ! how different from the unconditional, the 
ample, the conscientious oath of allegiance of the Irish Cath- 
ohc ! I pass over the second secret article, as it contains 
nothing worthy of observation ; but from the third I shall at 
ofice demonstrate what pitiful and vulgar dogs the original 
Orangemen were. Mark the thu'd secret article, I pray you— 
" That we will not see a brother offended for sixpence or one 
shilling, or more if convenient, which must be returned next 
meeting if possible." Such is the third of the secret Orange 
articles. I j)resume even Lord Yarmouth will go with them 
the full length of then- liberality of sixpence or one shilling, 
but fm'ther liis convenience may prevent him. 



ON REQUIRING SECURITIES FROM THE CATHOLICS. 51 

The fourtli secret article is quite cliaracteristic — " That we 
must not give the first assault to any person whatsoever, that 
may bring a brother into trouble." You perceive the limita- 
tion. They are entitled to give the first assault in all cases, 
but that in which it may not be quite prudent ; they are 
restricted from commencing their career of aggression, unless 
they are, I presume, ten to one — unless they are armed and 
the Catholics disarmed — unless their superiority in numbers 
and preparation is marked and manifest. See the natural 
alliance of cowardice with cruelty. They are ready to assault 
you, when no brother of theirs can be injured ; but if there 
be danger of injury to one of their brotherhood, they are 
bound to restrain, for that time, their hatred of the Catholics, 
and to allow them to pass unattacked. This fourth article 
proves, better than a volume, the aggressive spirit of the insti- 
tution, and accoimts for many a riot, and many a recent mur- 
der. The fifth secret article esliibits the rule of Orangemen, 
with respect to robbery. "5th. We are not to carry away 
money, goods, or anything, from any person whatever, except 
arms and ammunition, and those only from an enemy." The 
rule allows them to commit felony to this extent — namely, the 
arms and ammunition of any Catholic, or enemy ; and I have 
heard of a Catholic who was disarmed of some excellent sil- 
ver spoons, and a silver cup, by a detachment of this banditti. 
Yes, Lord Gosford was right, when he called them a lawless 
banditti; for here is such a regulation as could be framed 
only for those whose object was plunder — whose means were 
murder. The sixth and seventh secret articles relate to the 
attendance and enrolling of members; but the eighth is of 
great importance — ^it is this : — " 8th secret article — An, Orange- 
man is to keep his brother's secrets as his own, unless in case 
of murder, treason and perjury, and that of his own free will." 
See what an abundant crop of crimes the Orangeman is 
bound to conceal for his brother Orangeman. Killing a 
Papist may, in his eyes, be no murder, and he might be bound 
to conceal that ; bvit he is certainly bound to conceal all cases 
of riot, maiming, wounding, stabbing, theft, robbing, rape, 
house-breaking, house-burning, and every other human vil- 
lany, save murder, treason, and perjury. These are the good, 



52 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

the faithful, the loyal subjects. They may, without provoca- 
tion or excuse, attack and assault — give the first assault, mind, 
when they are certain no brother can be brought to trouble. 
They may feloniously and burglariously break into dwellings, 
and steal, take, and carry away whatever they please to call 
arms and ammunition. And, if the loyalty of a brother 
tempts him to go a little further, and to plunder any other 
articles, or to burn the house, or to violate female honor, his 
brother spectators of his crime are bound by their oaths to 
screen it forever from detection and justice. I know some 
men of better minds have been, in their horror of revolution- 
ary fury, seduced into these lodges, or have unthinkingly be- 
come members of them ; but the sj)irit, the object, and the 
consequences of this murderous and plundering association, 
are not the less manifest. 

I do not calumniate them ; for I prove the history of their 
foundation and origin by the unimpeachable testimony of Vis- 
count Gosford, and I prove their principles by their own secret 
articles, the genuineness of which no Orangeman can or will 
deny. If it were denied, I have the means of proving it be- 
yond a doubt. And when such principles are avowed, when so 
much is acknowledged and printed, oh, it requires but little 
knowledge of human nature to ascertain the enormities which 
must appear in the practice of those who have confessed so 
much of the criminal nature of theii- principles. There is, how- 
ever, one consolation. It is to be found in their ninth 
secret article — " No Koman Cathohc can be admitted on any 
account." I thank them for it, I rejoice at it ; no Eoman 
Cathohc deserves to be admitted. No Eoman Catholic would 
desire to belong to a society jDermitting aggression and vio- 
lence, when safe and pnident, j)ermitting robbery to a certain 
extent, and authorizing treason upon a given contingency. 
And now let me ask, what safety, what security can the min- 
ions of the court promise to themselves from the encourage- 
ment of tliis association ? They do want security, and. from 
the Catholics they can readily have it ; and you, my friends, 
may want security, not from the open attacks of the Orange- 
men — for agamst those the law and your own courage ^^^ll 
protect you ; but of their secret machinations you ought to 
be warned. They will endeavor, nay, I am most credibly as- 



ON REQDIEING SECUEITIES FEOM THE CATHOLICS. 53 

sured, that at tliis moment their secret emissaries are endea- 
Yoring to seduce you into acts of sedition and treason, that 
they may betray and destroy you. Eecollect what happened 
httle more than twelve months ago, when the Board detected 
and exposed a similar dehision in Dubhn, Recollect the un- 
punished conspiracy which was discovered at Limerick ; un- 
punished and unprosecuted was the Jiuthor. EecoUect the 
Mayor's Constable of Kilkenny, and he is still in office, though 
he administered an oath of secrecy, and gave money to his spy 
to treat the country people to liquor and seduce them to trea- 
son. I do most earnestly conjure you to be on your guard, no 
matter in what shape any man may approach, who suggests 
disloyalty to you — no matter of what rehgion he may affect to 
be — no matter what compassion he may express for your suf- 
ferings, what promises he may make ; believe me, that any man 
who may attempt to seduce you into any secret association or 
combination whatsoever, that suggests to you any violation of 
the law whatsoever, that dares to utter in your presence the lan- 
guage of sedition or of treason, depend upon it — take my word 
for it, and I am your sincere friend — that every such man is the 
hired emissary and the spy of your Orange enemies — that his 
real object is to betray you, to murder you under the forms of 
a judicial trial, and to ruin your country for your guilt. If, on 
the contrary, you continue at this trying moment peaceful, 
obedient and loyal ; if you avoid every secret association, and 
every incitement to turbulence ; if you persevere in your obe- 
dience to the laws, and in fidehty to the Crown and Constitution, 
your Emancipation is certain, and not distant, and your coun- 
try will be restored to you ; your natural friends and protec- 
tors wiU seek the redress of your grievances in and from parlia- 
ment, and Ireland will be again free and happy. If you suf- 
fer yourself to be seduced by these Orange betrayers, the 
members of the Board will be bound to resist your crimes 
with their lives ; you will bring disgxace and ruin on our cause ; 
you will destroy yourself and your families, and perpetuate the 
degradation and disgrace of your native land. But my fears 
are vain. I know your good sense ; I rely on your fidelity ; you 
win continue to baffle your enemies ; you ^vill continue faithful 
and peaceable ; and thus shall you preserve yourselves, promote 
your cause, and give security to the empire. 



SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL CONNELL. 



SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF JOHN MAGEE, JULY 27, 
1813. 



Mk. Magee was prosecuted for a libel on the Duke of Richmond, 
in the Dublin Evening journal, of which he was the proprietor. 
The case was opened by Mr. Kenimis, followed ^y Attorney-Gen- 
eral Saurin. Mr. O'Connell's reply was as follows : 

I consented to the adjournment yesterday, gentlemen of the 
jury, fi'om this impulse of nature which compels us to post- 
pone pain ; it is, indeed, painful to me to address you ; it is a 
cheerless, a hopeless task to address you — a task which would 
require all the animation and interest to be derived from the 
working of a mind fully fraught with the resentment and dis- 
gust created in mine yesterday, by that farrago of helpless ab- 
surdity with which Mr. Attorney-General regaled you. 

But I am now not sorry for the delay. Whatever I may have 
lost in vivacity, I trust I shall compensate for in discretion. 
That which yesterday excited my anger, now appears to me to 
be an object of pity ; and that which then aroused my indig- 
nation, now only moves to contempt. I can now address you 
Avith feelings softened, and, I trust, subdued ; and I do, fi'om 
my soul, declare, that I now cherish no other sensations than 
those which enable me to bestow on the Attorney-General, and 
on his discourse, pure and unmixed compassion. 

It was a discourse in which you could not discover either 
order, or method, or eloquence ; it contained very little logic, 
and no poetry at all ; violent and virulent, it was a confused 
and disjointed tissue of bigotry, amalgamated with congenial 
vulgarity. He accused my chent of using Billingsgate, and 
he accused him of it in language suited exclusively for that 
meridian. He descended even to the calling of names : he 
called this young gentleman a "malefactor," a "Jacobin," and 
a " ruffian," gentlemen of the jury ; he called him " abomina- 
ble," and " seditious," and "revolutionary," and "infamous," 
and a " ruffian" again, gentlemen of the jury ; he called him a 
" brothel keeper," a " pander," " a kind of bawd in breeches," 
and a " ruffian" a third time, gentlemen of the jury. 



SPEECH IN DEFENCE OE JOHN JMAQEE. 55 

I cannot repress my astonishment, liow Mr. Attorney-Gen- 
eral could have preserved this dialect in its native purity ; he 
has been now for nearly thirty years in the class of polished 
society ; he has, for some years, mixed among the highest or- 
ders in the state ; he has had the honor to belong for thirty 
years to the first profession in the world — to the only profes- 
sion, with the single exception, perhaps, of the military, to 
which a high-minded gentleman could condescend to belong — 
the Irish bar. To that bar, at which he has seen and heard a 
Burgh and a Duquery ; at which he must have hstened to a 
Burston, a Ponsonby, and a Curran ; to a bar which still con- 
tains a Plunket, a Ball, and despite of politics, I will add, a 
Bushe. With this galaxy of glory, flinging their light around 
him, how can he alone have remained in darkness ? How has 
it happened, that the twilight murkiness of his soul has not 
been illumined with a single ray shot from their lustre ? De- 
void of taste and of genius, how can he have had memory 
enough to preserve this original vulgarity ? He is, indeed, an 
object of compassion, and, from my inmost soul, I bestow on 
him my forgiveness, and my bounteous pity. 

But not for him alone should compassion be felt. Eecol- 
lect, that upon his advice — that with him, as the prime mover 
and instigator — those rash, and silly, and irritating meas- 
ures, of the last five years which have afflicted and distracted 
this long-suffering country have originated — with him they 
have all originated. Is there not then compassion due to the 
millions, whose destinies are made to depend upon his coun- 
sel ? Is there no pity to those who, hke me, must know that 
the liberties of the tenderest pledges of their affections, and 
of that which is dearer stUl, of their country, depends on this 
man's advice? 

Yet let not pity for us be unmixed ; he has afforded the 
consolation of hope ; his harangue has been heard ; it will be 
reported — I trust faithfully reported ; and if it be but read in 
England, we may venture to hope that there may remain just 
so much good sense in England as to induce the conviction of 
the folly and the danger of conducting the. government of a 
brave and long-enduring people by tlie counsels of so taste- 
less and talentless an adviser. 



56 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL o'CONNELL. 

See what an imitative animal man is ! The sound of ruf- 
fian — ruffian — ruffian, had scarcely died on the Attorney-Gen- 
eral's lips, when you find the word honored with all the per- 
manency of print, in one of his pensioned and well-paid, but 
ill-read newspapers. Here is the first line in the Dublin 
Journal of this day : — " The ruffian who writes for the Free- 
man's Journal." Here is an apt scholar— he profits well of 
the Attorney-General's tuition. The pupil is worthy of the 
master — the master is just suited to the pupil. 

I now dismiss the style and measure of the Attorney-Gene- 
ral's discourse, and I require your attention to its matter, 
that matter I must divide, although with him there was no 
division, into two unequal portions. The first, as it was by 
far the greater portion of his discourse, shall be that which 
was altogether inapphcable to the purposes of this prosecu- 
tion. The second, and infinitely the smaller portion of his 
speech, is that which related to the subject matter of the 
indictment which you are to try. He has touched upon and 
disfigured a great variety of topics. I shall follow him at my 
good leisure through them. He has invited me to a wide 
field of discussion. I accept his challenge with alacrity and 
with pleasure. 

This extraneous part of his discourse, which I mean first 
to discuss, was distinguished by two leading features. The 
first, consisted of a dull and reproving sermon, with which he 
treated my colleagues and myself, for the manner in which Ave 
thought fit to conduct this defence. He talked of the melan- 
choly exhibition of four houi-s wasted, as he said, in frivolous 
debate, and he obscurely hinted at something hke incorrect- 
ness of professional conduct. He has not ventured to speak 
out, but I will. I shall say nothing for myself ; but for my 
colleagues — my inferiors in professional standing, but infinitely 
my superiors in every talent and in every acquirement — my 
colleagues, whom I boast as my friends, not in the routine 
language of the bar, but in the sincerity of my esteem and 
afiection ; for my learned and upright colleagues, I treat the 
unfounded insinuation with the most contemptuous scorn ! 

All I shall expose is the utter inattention of the fact, which,, 
in small things as in great, seems to mark the Attoruey-Gen- 



SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF JOHN MAGEE. 57 

eral's career. He talks of four liours. "Wliy, it was past one 
before the last of you were digged together by the Sheriff, and 
the Attorney-General rose to address you before three. How 
he could contrive to squeeze four hours into that interval, is for 
him to explain ; nor should I notice it, but that it is the par- 
ticular prerogative of dullness to be accurate in the detail of 
minor facts, so that the Attorney-General is without an ex- 
cuse, when he departs from them, and when for four hours 
you have had not quite two. Take this also with you, that we 
assert our uncontrollable right to employ them as we have done ; 
and as to his advice, we neither respect, nor will we receive 
it ; but we can afford cheerfully to pardon the vain presump- 
tion that made him offer us counsel. 

For the rest, he may be assured that we will never imitate 
his example. We will never volunteer to mingle our politics, 
whatever they may be, with our forensic duties. I made this 
the rigid rule of my professional conduct ; and if I shall ap- 
pear to depart from this rule now, I bid you recollect that I 
am compelled to follow the Attorney-General into grounds 
which, if he had been wise, he would have avoided. 

Yes ; I am compelled to follow him into the discussion of 
his conduct toward the Catholics. He has poured out the full 
vial of his own praise on that conduct — praise in which, I can 
safely assure him, he has not a single unpaid rival. It is a 
topic upon which no unbribed man, except himself, dwells. I 
admit the disinterestedness with which he praises himself, and 
I do not envy him his delight, but he ought to know, if he sees 
or hears a word of that kind from any other man, that that 
man receives or expects compensation for his task, and really 
deserves money for his labor and invention. 

My lord, upon the Catholic subject, I commence with one 
assertion of the Attorney-General, which I trust I misunder- 
stood. He talked, as I collected him, of the Catholics having 
imbibed principles of a seditious, treasonable, and revolutionary 
nature ! He seemed to me, most distinctly to charge us with 
treason ! There is no relying on his words for his meaning — 
I know there is not. On a former occasion, I took down a re- 
petition of this charge full seventeen times on my brief, and 
yet, afterwards, it turned out that he never intended to make 



58 SELECT SPEECHES OE DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

any such charge ; that he forgot he had ever used those words, 
and he disclaimed the idea they naturally convey. It is clear, 
therefore, that uj)on this subject he knows not what he sa^^s ; 
and that these phrases are the mere flowers of his rhetoric, 
but quite innocent of any meaning ! 

Upon this account I pass liim by, I go beyond him, and I 
content myself with proclaiming those charges, whosoever may 
make them, to be false and base calumnies ! It is impossible 
to refute such charges in the language of dignity or temper. 
But if any man dares to charge the CathoHc body, or the 
Catholic Board, or any individuals of that Board with sedition 
or treason, I do here, I shall always in this court, in the city, 
in the field, brand him as an infamous and profligate liar ! 

Pardon the phrase, but there is no other suitable to the oc- 
casion. But he is a profligate liar who so asserts, because he 
must know that the whole tenor of our conduct confutes the 
assertion. What is it we seek ? 

Chief Justice. — What, Mr. O'Conhell, can this have to do 
with the question which the jury are to try ? 

Me. O'Connell. — You heard the Attorney-General traduce 
and calumniate us — ^you heard him with patience and with 
temper — listen now to our vindication ! 

I ask, what is it we seek ? What is it we incessantly and, if 
you please, clamorously petition for ? Why, to be allowed to 
partake of the advantages of the constitution. We are ear- 
nestly anxious to share the benefits of the constitution. We 
look to the participation in the constitution as our greatest po- 
htical blessing. If we desired to destroy it, would we seek to 
share it ? If we wished to overturn it, would we exert our- 
selves through calumny, and in peril, to obtain a portion of 
its blessings ? Strange, inconsistent voice of calumny ! You 
charge us with intemperance in our exertions for a participa- 
tion in the constitution, and you charge us at the same time, 
almost in the same sentence, with a design to overturn the con- 
stitution. The dupes of your hypocrisy may believe you ; 
but base calumniators, you do not, you cannot believe your- 
selves ! 

The Attorney-General — " this wisest and best of men," as his 



SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF JOHN MAGEE. 59 

colleague, tlie Solicitor-General, called him in his presence — 
the Attorney-General next boasted of his triumph over Pope 
and Popery — " I put down the Catholic Committee ; I will put 
down, at my good time, the Catholic Board." This boast is 
partly historical, partly prophecy. He was wrong in his his- 
tory — he is quite mistaken in his prophecy. He did not put 
down the Catholic Committee — we gave up that name the 
moment that this sapient Attorney-General's polemica-legal 
controversy dwindled jnto a mere dispute about words. He 
told us that in the English language " pretence " means " pur- 
pose ;" had it been French and not Enghsh, we might have 
been inclined to respect his judgment, but in point of English 
we venture to differ with him ; we told him "puipose," good 
Mr. Attorney-General, is just the reverse of "pretence." The 
quarrel grew warm and animated : we appealed to common 
sense, to the grammar and to the dictionary ; common sense, 
grammar, and the dictionary, decided in our favor. He brought 
his appeal to this court, your lordship, and your brethren 
unanimously decided that in point of law — mark, mark, gen- 
tlemen of the jury, the sublime wisdom of the law — the 
court decided that, in point of law, "pretence" does mean 
"purpose !" 

Fully contented with this very reasonable and more satis- 
factory decision, there still remained a matter of fact between 
us : the Attorney-General charged us with being representa- 
tives ; we denied all representation. He had two witnesses to 
prove the fact for him ; they swore to it one way at one trial, 
and directly the other way at the next. An honorable, intelli- 
gent, and enlightened jury disbelieved those witnesses at the 
first trial — matters were better managed at the second trial — 
the jury were better arranged. I speak delicately, gentle- 
men ; the jury were better arranged, as the witnesses were 
better informed ; and, accordingly, there was one verdict for us 
on the representative question, and one verdict against us. 

You know" the jury that found for us ; you know that it was 
Sir Charles Saxton's Castle-list jury that found against us. 
Well, the consequence was, that, thus encouraged, Mr. Attor- 
ney-General proceeded to force. We abhorred tumult, and 
were weary of litigation ; we new-modelled the agents and 



60 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

managers of the Catholic petitions ; we formed an assembly, 
respecting which there could not be a shadow of pretext for 
calling it a representative body. "We disclaim representation ; 
and we rendered it impossible, even for the virulence of the 
most mahgnant. law-officer li\dng, to employ the Convention 
Act against us — that, even upon the Attorney-General's own 
construction, requires representation as an ingredient in the 
offence it prohibits. He cannot possibly call us represen- 
tatives ; we are individual servants of the public, whose busi- 
ness we do gratuitously but zealously. Our cause has ad- 
^'nnced even from his persecution — and this he calls putting 
down the Cathohc Committee ! 

Next, he glorifies himself in his prospect of putting down the 
Catholic Board. For the present, he, indeed, tells you, that 
much as he hates the Pax3ists, it is unnecessary for him to crush 
our Board, because we injure our own cause so much. He 
SAjs that we are very criminal, but we are so foohsh that our 
folly serves as a compensation for our wickedness. We are 
very wicked and very inischievous, but then we are such fool- 
ish little criminals, that we deserve his indulgence. Thus he 
tolerates ofiences because of their being committed sillily ; and 
indeed, we give Mm so much pleasure and gratification by the 
injury we do our own cause, that he is spared the superfluous 
labor of impeding our j)etitiou by his i)i'Osecutions, fines, or 
imprisonments. 

He expresses the very idea of the Eoman Domitian, of 
whom some of you possibly may have read; he amused his 
days in torturing men — his evenings he relaxed in the humble 
cruelty of impaling flies. A courtier caught a fly for his im- 
perial amusement — "Fool," said the emperor, " fool, to give 
thyself the troiible of torturing an animal that was about to 
burn itself to death in the candle !" Such is the spirit of the 
Attorney-General's commentary on our Board. Oh, rare At- 
torney-General ! — Oh, best and wisest of men ! 

But to be serious. Let me pledge myself to you that he im- 
poses on you, when he threatens to crush the Catholic Board. 
Illegal violence may do it — force may effectuate it; but your 
hopes and his will be defeated, if he attempts it by any course 
of law. I am, if not a lawyer, at least, a barrister. On this 



SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF JOHN MAGEE. 61 

subject I ought to know something, and I do not hesitate to 
contradict the Attorney-General on this point, and to proclaim 
to you and to the country that the Catholic Board is jDerfectly 
a legal assembly — that it not only does not violate the law, 
but that it is entitled to the protection of the law, and in the 
very proudest tone of firmness, I hurl defiance at the Attorney- 
General ! 

I defy him to allege a law or a statute, or even a proclama- 
tion that is violated by the CathoUc Board. No, gentlemen, 
no ; his religious prejudices — ^if the absence of every charity 
can be called anything rehgious — his rehgious prejudices real- 
ly obscure his reason, his bigoted intolerance has totally 
darkened his understanding, and he mistakes the plainest 
facts and misquotes the clearest law, in the ardor and vehe- 
mence of his rancor. I disclaim his moderation — I scorn his 
forbearance — I tell him he knows not the law if he thinks as 
he says ; and if he thinks so, I teh him to his beard, that he 
is not honest in not having sooner prosecuted us, and I 
challenge him to that prosecution . 

It is strange — it is melancholy, to reflect on the miserable 
and mistaken pride that must inflate him to talk as he does of 
the Catholic Board. The Catholic Board is com;:osed of 
men — I include not myself — of course, I always except my- 
self — every way his superiors, in birth, in fortune, in talents, 
in rank. What ! is he to talk of the Cathohc Board hghtly ? 
At their head is the Earl of Fingal, a nobleman whose exalted 
rank stoops beneath the superior station of his virtues- — ^whom 
even the venal minions of power must respect. We are en- 
gaged, patiently and perseveringly engaged, in a struggle 
through the open channels of the constitution for our Kberties. 
The son of the ancient earl whom I have mentioned cannot 
in his native land attain any honorable distinction of the 
state, and yet Mr. Attorney-General knows that they are open 
to every son of every bigoted and intemperate stranger that 
may settle amongst us. 

But this system cannot last ; he may insult, he may calum- 
niate, he may prosecute ; but the Catholic cause is on its ma- 
jestic march ; its progress is rapid and obvious ; it is cheered 
in its advance, and aided by all that is dignified and dispas- 



62 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL o'CONNELL. 

sionate — ^by everytliing that is patriotic — ^by all the honor, all 
the integrity of the empire ; and its success is just as certain 
as the return of to-morrow's sun, and the close of to-morrow's 
eve. 

" We will — we must soon be emancipated, in despite of the 
Attorney-General, aided as he is by his august allies, the 
aldermen of Skinner's Alley. In despite of the Attorney- 
General and the aldermen of Skinner's Alley, our emancipa- 
tion is certain, and not distant. 

I have no difficulty in perceiving the motive of the Attor- 
ney-General, in devodng so much of his medley oration to the 
Cathohc question, and to the expression of his bitter hatred to 
us, and of his determination to ruin our hopes. It had, to be 
sm'e, no connection with the cause, but it had a direct and na- 
tural connection with you. He has been, all his life, reckoned 
a man of consumm ite cunning and dexterity ; and v^' hilst one 
wonders that he has so much exposed himseK upon those 
prosecutions, and accounts for it by the proverbial blindness of 
rehgious zeal, it is still easy to discover much of his native 
cunning and dexterity. Gentlemen, he thinks he knows his 
men — ^lie knows you ; many of you signed the no-Popery peti- 
tion ; he heard one of you boast of it ; he knows you would 
not have been summoned on this jury, if you had entertained 
liberal sentiments ; he knows all this, and, therefore it is that 
he, with the artifice and cunning of an experienced nisi prius 
advocate, endeavors to win yOur confidence, and command 
your affections by the display of his congenial ilhberahty and 
bigotry. 

You are all, of course, Protestants; see what a comph- 
ment he pays to your religion and his own, when he endeavors 
thus to procure a verdict on your oaths ; when he endeavors to 
seduce you to what, if you were so seduced, would be perjury, 
by indulging your prejudices, and flattering you by the coinci- 
dence of his sentiments and wishes. Will he succeed, gentle- 
men ? Will you allow him to draw you into a perjury out of 
zeal for yom* religion ? And wiU you violate the pledge you 
have given to your God to do justice, in order to gratify your 
anxiety for the ascendency of what you beheve to be his 
church? Gentlemen, reflect on the strange and jnonstrous 



SPEECH IN DEFENCE OP JOHN MAGEE. G3 

inconsistency of this conduct, and do not commit, if you can 
avoid it, the pious crime of violating your solemn oaths, in aid 
of the pious designs of the Attorney-General against Popery. 

Oh, gentlemen ! it is not in any lightness of heart I thus 
address you — ^it is rather in bitterness and sorrow ; you did not 
expect flattery from me, and my client was little disposed to 
offer it to you ; besides, of what avail would it be to flatter, if 
you came here pre-determined, and it is too plain that you are 
not selected for this jury from any notion of your impar- 
tiality? 

But when I talk to you of your oaths and of your rehgion 
I would full fain I could impress you with a respect for both 
the one and the other. I, who do not flatter, teU you, that 
though I do not join with you in belief, I have the most un- 
feigned respect for the form of Christian faith which you. pro- 
fess. Would that its substance, not its forms and temporal 
advantages, were deeply impressed on your minds ! then 
should I not address you in the cheerless and hopeless de- 
spondency that crowds on my mind, and drives me to taunt 
you with the air of ridicule I do. Gentlemen, I sincerely 
respect and venerate your rehgion, but I despise and I now 
apprehend your prejudices, in the same proportion as the At- 
torney-General has cultivated them. In plain truth, every 
religion is good — every religion is true to him who, in his due 
caution and conscience, believes it. There is but one bad 
rehgion, that of a man who professes a faith which he does 
not believe ; but the good religion may be, and often is, cor- 
rupted by the wretched and wicked prejudices which admit a 
difference of opinion as a cause of hatred. 

The Attorney-General, defective in argument, weak in his 
cause, has artfully roused your prejudices at his side. I have, 
on the contrary, met your prejudices boldly. If your verdict 
shall be for me, you will be certain that it has been produced 
by nothing but unwilhng conviction resulting from sober and 
satisfied judgment. If your verdict be bestowed upon the ar- 
tifices of the Attorney-General, you may happen to be right ; 
but do you not see the danger of its being produced by an ad- 
mixture of passion and prejudice with your reason? How 
difficult is it to separate prejudice from reason, when they run 



64 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL o'CONNELL. 

iu tlie same direction. If 3'ou be men of conscience, then I 
call on yon to listen to me, that your consciences may be safe, 
and youi- reason alone be the guardian of your oath, and the 
sole monitor of your decision. 

I now bring you to the immediate subject of this indict- 
ment. Mr. Magee is charged with publishing a hbel in liis 
paper called the Dublin Evening Post. His lordship has de- 
cided that there is legal proof of the publication, and I would 
be sorry you thought of acquitting Mr. Magee under the pre- 
tence of not beheving that evidence. I will not, therefore, 
trouble you on that part of the case ; I will tell you, gentle- 
men, presently, what this publication is ; but suffer me first to 
inform you what it is not — for this I consider to be very im- 
portant to the strong, and, in truth, triumphant defence which 
my client has to this indictment. 

Gentlemen, this is not a libel on Charles Lennox, Duke of 
Bichmond, in his private or individual capacity. It does not 
interfere with the privacy of his domestic life. It is free from 
any reproach upon his domestic habits or conduct ; it is per- 
fectly pure from any attempt to traduce his personal honor 
or integrity. Towards the man, there is not the least taint of 
malignity ; nay, the thing is still stronger. Of Charles Duke 
of Richmond, personally, and as disconnected with the admin- 
istration of pubhc affahs, it speaks in terms of civihty and 
even respect. It contains this passage, which I read from the 
indictment : — 

' ' Had he remained wliat lie fii'st came over, or what he afterwards 
professed to be, he would have retained his reputation for honest open 
hostility, defending his political principles with firmness, perhaps with, 
warmth, but without rancor ; the supporter and not the tool of an ad- 
ministration ; a mistaken i^ohtician, perhaps, but an honorable man and 
a resj)ectable soldier," 

The Duke is here in this libel, my lords— in this libel, gen- 
tlemen of the jury, the Duke of Richmond is called an honor- 
able man and a respectable soldier ! Could more flattering- 
expressions be invented ? Has the most mercenary press that 
ever yet existed, the mercenary press of this metropohs, con*- 
tained in retui'n for aU the money it has received, anj 



SPEECH IN DEFENCE OE JOHN MAGEE. 65 

praise wliicli ouglit to be so pleasing — "an lionorable 
man and a respectable soldier?" I do, therefore, beg of 
you, gentlemen, as yon value your honesty, to carry with 
you in your distinct recollection, this fact, that whatever of 
evil this publication may contain, it does not involve any re- 
proach against the Duke of Eichmond, in any other than in 
his pubhc and official character. 

I have, gentlemen, next to require you to take notice, that 
tliis pubhcation is not indicted as a seditious Hbel. The word 
seditious is, iddeed, used as a kind of make-weight in the iu- 
troductory part of the indictment. But mark, and recollect, 
that this is not an indictment for sedition. It is not, then, for 
private slander, nor for any offence against the constitution, 
that Mr. Magee now stands arraigned before you. 

In the third place, gentlemen, there is this siugular feature 
in this case, namely — that this hbel, as the prosecutor calls it, 
is not charged in this indictment to be " false." 

The indictment has this singular difference from any other 
I have ever seen, that the assertions of the publications are 
not even stated to be false. 

They have not had the courtesy to you, to state upon 
record, that these charges, such as they are, were contrary to 
the truth. This I believe to be the first instance in which the 
allegation of falsehood has been omitted. To what is this 
omission to be attributed ? Is it that an experiment is to be 
made, how much further the doctrine of the criminahty of 
truth can be drawn? Does the prosecutor wish to make 
another bad precedent ? or is it in contempt of any dis- 
tinction between truth and falsehood, that this charge is 
thus framed ? or does he fear that you would scruple to con- 
vict, if the indictment charged that to be false, which you aU 
know to be true ? 

However that may be, I will have you to remember, that 
you are now to pronounce upon a publication, the truth of 
which is not controverted. Attend to the case, and you will 
find you are not to try Mr. Magee for sedition which may 
endanger the state, or for private defamation which may press 
sorely upon the heart, and blast the prospects of a private 
family ; and that the subject matter for your decision is not 
characterized as false, or described as untrue. 



QQ SELECT SrEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

Such are tlic circumstances wliicli accompany this pubhca- 
tion, on -which you arc to pronounce a verdict of guilt or inno- 
cence. The case is with you ; it belongs to you exclusively to 
decide it. His lordship may ad\dse, but he cannot control your 
decision, and it belongs to you alone to say whether or not, 
upon the entire matter, you conceive it to be evidence of guilt, 
and deserving of punishment. The statute law gives or recog- 
nizes this your right, and, therefore, imjposes this on you as 
your duty. The legislative has precluded any lawyer from be- 
ing able to dictate to you. The Sohcitor-General cannot now 
venture to promulgate the sla^dsh doctrine which he addressed 
to Doctor Sheridan's jury, when he told them, " not to presume 
to diflfer from the Court in matter of law." The law and the 
fact are here the same, namely — the guilty or innocent design 
of the publication. 

Indeed, in any criminal case, the doctrine of the Sohcitor- 
General is intolerable. I enter my solemn protest against it. 
The verdict which is required from the jury in any criminal 
case has nothing special in it — it is not the finding of the fact 
in the affirmative or negative — it is not, as in Scotland, that 
the charge is proved or not proved. No ; the jury is to say 
whether the prisoner be guilty or not ; and could a juror find a 
true verdict, who declared a man guilty upon evidence of some 
act, perhaps praiseworthy, but clearly void of evil design or 
bad consequences ? 

I do, therefore, deny the doctrine of the learned gentleman ; 
it is not constitutional, and it would be frightful if it were. 
No judge can dictate to a jury — no jury ought to aUow itself 
to be dictated to. 

If the Solicitor-General's doctrine were estabhshed, see 
Avhat oppressive consequences might result. At some future 
period, some man may attain the first place on the bench, by 
the reputation wliich is so easily acquired by a certain degree 
of clmrch-wardening piety, added to a great gTavity, and mai- 
denly decorum of manners. Such a man may reach the bench 
— for I am putting an imaginary case — he may be a man with- 
out passions, and therefore without vices ; he may, my lord, 
be a man superfluously rich, and therefore, not to be bribed 
with money, but rendered partial by his bigotry, and 



SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF JOHN MAGEE. 67 

corrupted by his prejudices ; such a man, inflated by flat- 
tery, and bloated in his dignity, may hereafter use that 
character for sanctity which has served to promote him, as a 
sword, to hew down the struggling hberties of his country ; 
such a judge may interfere before trial ! and at the trial be a 
partisan ! 

Gentlemen, should an honest jury — could an honest jury (if 
an honest jury were again found) listen with safety to the dic- 
tates of such a judge ? I repeat it, therefore, that the Sohci- 
tor- General is mistaken — that the law does not, and cannot, 
requke such a submission as he preached ; and at all events, 
gentlemen, it cannot be controverted, that in the present in- 
stance, that of an alleged hbel, the decision of all law and fact 
belongs to you. 

I am then warranted in directing to you some observations 
on the law of libel, and in doing so, I disclaim any apology 
for the consumption of the time necessary for my purpose. 
Gentlemen, my intention is to lay before you a short and rapid 
view of the causes which have introduced into courts the mon- 
strous assertion — that truth is crime ! 

It is to be deeply lamented, that the art of printing was un- 
known at the earher periods of our history. If, at the time 
the barons wrung the simple but subhme charter of liberty 
from a timid, perfidious sovereign, from a violator of his 
word, from a man covered with disgrace, and sunk in infamy 
— if at the time when that cliarter was confirmed and re- 
newed, the press had existed,- it would, I think, have been the 
first care of those friends of freedom to have estabhshed a 
principle of hberty for it to rest upon, which might resist every 
future assault. Their simple and unsophisticated understand- 
ings could never be brought to comprehend the legal subtle- 
ties by which it is now argued, that falsehood is useful and in- 
nocent, and truth, the emanation and type of heaven, a crime. 
They would have cut with their swords the cobweb links of so- 
phistry in which truth is entangled ; and they would have 
rendered it impossible to re-estabhsh this injustice without 
violating the principle of the constitution. 

But in the ignorance of the blessmg of a free press, they 
could not have provided for its security. There remains, how- 



68 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

over, an expression of tlieir sentiments, on our statute books. 
Tlie ancient parliament did pass a law against tlie spreaders 
of false rumors. This law proves two tilings — first, that be- 
fore this stat^lte, it was not considered a crime in law to spread 
even a false rumor, otherwise the statute would have been un- 
necessary ; and secondly, that in their notion of crime, false- 
hood was a necessary ingredient. But here I have to remark 
upon, and regret the strange propensity of judges, to construe 
the law in favor of tyranny, and against liberty ; for servile 
and corrupt judges st)on decided, that upon the construction 
of this law, it was immaterial whether the rumors were true or 
false, and that a law made to punish false rumors, was equally 
apphcable to the true. 

This, gentlemen, is called construction ; it is just that which 
in more recent times, and of inevitable consequence, from 
purer motives, has converted " pretence " into " purpose." 

When the art of printing was invented, its value to every 
sufferer — its terror to every oppressor was soon obvious, and 
means were speedily adopted to prevent its salutary effects. 
The Star-Chamber — the odious Star-Chamber was either cre- 
ated, or, at least, enlarged and brought into activity. Its pro- 
ceedings were arbitrary — ^its decisions were oppressive, and 
injustice and tyranny were formed into a system. To describe 
it to you in one sentence, it was a prematurely packed jury. 
Perhaps that description does not shock you much. Let me 
report one of its decisions which will, I think, make its hor- 
rors more sensible to you — it is -a ludicrous as well as a mel- 
ancholy instance. 

A tradesman— a ruffian, I presume, he was styled— in an 
altercation with a nobleman's servant, called the swan, which 
was worn on the servant's arm for a badge, a goose. For this 
offence — the calhug the nobleman's badge of a swan a goose, 
he was brought before the Star-Chamber — ^he was, of course, 
convicted ; he lost, as I recollect, one of his ears on the pil- 
lory—was sentenced to two years' imprisonment, and a fine of 
X500 ; and all this to teach him to distinguish swans from geese. 

I now ask you, to what is it you tradesmen and merchants 
are indebted for the safety and respect you can enjoy in 
society ? What is it which has rescued you from the slavery 



SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF JOHN MAGEE. 69 

in wliicli persons who are engaged in trade were lield by the 
iron barons of former days ? I will tell you ; it is the light, 
the reason, and the hberty which have been created, and will, 
in despite of every, opposition, be perpetuated by the exertion 
of the press. 

Gentlemen, the Star-Chamber was particularly vigilant over 
the infant struggles of the press. A code of laws became 
necessary to govern the new enemy to prejudice and oppres- 
sion — the Press. The Star-Chamber adopted, for this pur- 
pose, the civil law, as it is caEed — ^the law of Eome — not the 
law at the periods of her liberty and her glory, but the law 
which was promulgated when she fell into slavery and dis- 
grace, and recognized this principle, that the will of the prince 
was the rule of the law. The civil law was adopted by the 
Star-Chamber as its guide in proceedings against, and in pun- 
ishing libellers ; hut, unfortunately, only part of it was adopted, 
and that, of course, was the part least favorable to freedom. 
So much of the civil law as assisted to discover the concealed 
libeller, and to punish him when discovered, was carefully 
selected ; but the civil law allowed truth to be a defence, and 
that part was carefully rejected. 

The Star-Chamber was soon after abolished. It was sup- 
pressed by the hatred and vengeance of an outraged people, 
and it has since, and until our days, lived only in the recollec- 
tion of abhorrence and contempt. But we have fallen upon bad 
days and evil times ; and in our days we have seen a lawyer, 
long of the prostrate and degraded bar of England, presume 
to suggest a high eulogium on the Star-Chamber, and regret 
its downfall ; and he has done this in a book dedicated, by 
permission, to Lord EUenborough. This is, perhaps, an omi- 
nous circumstance ; and as Star-Chamber punishments have 
been revived — as two years of imprisonment has become fami- 
liar, I know not how soon the useless lumber of even weU- 
selected juries may be abolished, and a new Star-Chambor 
created. 

From the Star-Chamber, gentlemen, the prevention and 
punishment of libels descended to the courts of common law, 
and with the power they seem to have inherited much of the 
spirit of that tribunal. Servihty at the bar, and profligacy on 



70 SELECT SPEECHES OP DANIEL 0'c6N]SIELL. 

tlie beiicli, have not been wanting to aid every constraction un- 
favorable to fi-eedom, and at length it is taken as gi'anted and 
as clear law, that truth or falsehood are quite immaterial cir- 
cumstances, constituting no part of either guilt or innocence. 

I would Avish to examine this revolting doctrine, and, in 
doing so, I am proud to tell you, that it has no other founda- 
tion than in the oft-repeated assertions of lawyers and judges. 
Its authority depends on what are technically called the dicta 
of the judges and writers, and not upon solemn or regular 
adjudications on the point. One servile lawyer has repeated 
this doctrine, from time to time, after another — and one over- 
bearing judge has re-echoed the assertion of a time-serving 
predecessor, and the i^ubhc have, at length, submitted. 

I do, therefore, feel, not only gratified in having the occa- 
sion, but bound to express my opinion upon the real law of 
this subject. I know that opinion is but of Httle weight. I 
have no professional rank, or station, or talents to give it im- 
portance, but it is an honest and conscientious opinion, and it 
is this — that in the discussion of pubUc subjects, and of the 
administration of pubhc men, truth is a duty and not a crime. 

You can, at least, understand my description of the liberty 
of the press. That of the Attorney-General is as unintelligi- 
ble as contradictory. He tells jom, in a very odd and quaint 
phrase, that the liberty of the press consists in there being no 
previous restraint upon the tongue or the pen. How any pre- 
vious restraint could be imposed -on the tongue it is for this 
wisest of men to tell you, unless, indeed, he resorts to Dr. 
Lad's prescription with respect to the toothache eradication. 
Neither can the absence of previous restraint constitute a free 
press, unless, indeed, it shaU be distinctly ascertained, and 
clearly defined, what shall be subsequently called a crime. If 
the crime of hbel be undefined, or uncertain, or capricious, 
then, uistead of the absence of restraint before publication 
being an advantage, it is an injury ; instead of its being a bless- 
ing, it is a curse — it is nothing more than a pitfaU and snare 
for the unwary. This hberty of the press is only an oppor- 
tunity and a temptation offered by the law to the commis- 
sion of crime — it is a trap laid to catch men for punish- 
ment — it is not the hberty of discussing truth or discoun- 



SPEECH IN DEFENCE OP JOHN MAGEE. 71 

tenancing oppression, but a mode of rearing up victims for 
prosecution, and of seducing men into imprisonment. 

Yet, can any gentleman concerned for tlie Crown give me a 
definition of the crime of libel ? Is it not uncertain and un- 
defined ; and, in truth, is it not, at this moment, quite subject 
to the caprice and whim of the judge and of the jury ? Is the 
Attorney -General — is the Solicitor^General disposed to say 
otherwise? If he do, he must contradict his own doctrine, 
and adopt mine. 

But no, gentlemen, they must leave you in uncertainty and 
doubt, and ask you to give a verdict, on your oath, without 
furnishing you with any rational materials to judge whether 
you be right or wrong. Indeed, to such a wild extent of ca- 
price has Lord Ellenborough carried the doctrine of crime in 
libel, that he appears to have gravely ruled, that it was a crime 
to call one lord "a stout-built, special pleader," although, in 
point of fact, that lord was stout-built, and had been very 
many years a special pleader. And that it was a crime to call 
another lord, " a sheep-feeder from Cambridgeshire," although 
that lord was right glad to have a few sheep in that count}^ 
These are the extravagant vagaries of the Crown lawyers and 
prerogative judges ; you will find it impossible to discover any 
rational rule for your conduct, and can never rest upon any 
satisfactory view of the subject, unless you are pleased to. 
adopt my description. Reason and justice equally recognize 
it, and believe me, that genuine law is much more closely con- 
nected with justice and reason than some persons will avow. 

Gentlemen, you are now apprised of the nature of the 
alleged hbel; it is a discussion upon the administration of 
pubhc men. I have also submitted to you my view of the 
law apphcable to such a pubHcation ; we are, therefore, pre- 
pared to go into the consideration of every sentence in tjie 
newspaper in question. 

But before I do so, just allow me to point your attention to 
the motives of this young gentleman. The Attorney-General 
has threatened him with fine and a dungeon ; he has told Mr. 
Magee that he should suffer in liis purse and in Ms person. 
Mr. Magee knew his danger well. Mr. Magee^ before he piib- 
lished this paper, was quite apprised that he ran the risk of 



72 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

fine aud of imprisonment. He knew also that if lie changed 
his tone — that if he became merely neutral, but especially, if 
he went over to the other side and praised the Duke of Rich- 
mond — if he had sufficient gravity to talk, without a smile, of 
the sorrow of the people of Ireland at his Grace's departure — 
if he had a \dsage sufficiently lugubrious to say so, without 
laughing, to cry out " moia'nfully, oh! mom^nfully !" for the de- 
parture of the Duke of Richmond — if at a period when the 
people of Ireland, from Magherafelt to Dingledecouch, are 
rejoicing at that departure, Mr. Magee could put on a solemn 
countenance and pick up a grave and narcotic accent, and- 
have the resolution to assert the sorrow of the people for los- 
ing so sweet and civil a Lord Lieutenant — why, in that case, 
gentlemen, you know the consequences. They are obvious. 
He might libel certain classes of his Majesty's subjects with 
impunity ; he would get abundance of money, a place, and a 
pension — you know he would. The proclamations would be 
inserted in his paper. The wide-street advertisements, the 
ordnance, the barrack-board notices, and the advertisements 
of all the other public boards and offices — you can scarcely 
calculate how much money he sacrifices to his principles. I 
am greatly within bounds when I say, at least, X5,000 per 
annum, of the public money, would reach him if he were to 
alter his tone, and abandon his opinions. 

Has he instructed me to boast of the sacrifices he thus 
makes ? No, gentlemen, no, no ; he deems it no sacrifice, be- 
cause he desires no share in the public plunder; but I intro- 
duce this topic to demonstrate to you the pmity of his inten- 
tions. He cannot be actuated, in the part he takes, by mean or 
mercenary motives ; it is not the base lucre of gain that leads 
him astray. If he be mistaken, he is, at least, disinterested 
aud sincere. You may dislike his political opinions, but you 
cannot avoid respecting the independence of his principles. 

Behold, now, the pubhcation which this man of pure princi- 
ples is called to answer for as a libel. It commences thus : — 

" DUKE or EICHMOND. 

"As the Duke of Eiclimond will shortly retii-e from the government 
of Ireland, it has been deemed necessaiy to take such a review of his 



SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF JOHN MAGEE. 73 

administration as may, at least, warn his successor from pursuing the 
errors of his Grace's conduct. 

"The review shall contain many anecdotes of the Irish court which 
were never published, and which were so secret, that his Grace will 
not fail to be surprised at the sight of them in a newspaper." 

In this paragraph there is nothing Hbellous ; it talks of the 
errors, indeed, of his Grace's administration ; but I do not 
think the Attorney-General will venture to suggest, that the 
gentle expression of " errors," is a hbel. 

To err, gentlemen, is human : and his Grace is admitted, by 
the Attorney-General, to be but a man ; I shall waste none of 
your time in proving, that we may, without offence, treat of 
his " errors." But, this is not even the errors of the man, but 
of his administration ; it was not infallible, I humbly presume. 

I call your jDarticular attention to the second paragraph ; it 
runs thus : 

" If the administration of the Duke of Eichmond had been conducted 
with more than ordinary talent, its errors might, in some degree have 
been atoned for by its ability, and the i)eople of Ireland, though they 
might have much to regret, yet would have something to admire ; but 
truly, after the gravest consideration, they must find themselves at a loss 
to discover any striking feature in his Grace's administration, that makes 
it superior to the worst of his predecessors." 

The Attorney-General dwelt much upon this paragraph, 
gentlemen, and the importance which he attached to it fur- 
nishes a strong illustration of his own consciousness of the 
v/eakness of his case. "What is the meaumg of this para- 
graph ? I appeal to you whether it be more than this — that 
there has been nothing admirable in his administration — that 
there has not been much ability displayed by it. So far, gen- 
tlemen, there is, indeed, no flattery, but still less of libel, un- 
less you are prepared to say, thaj; to withhold praise from any 
administration deserves punishment. 

Is it an indictable offence not to perceive its occult talents ? 
"Why, if it be, find my client guilty of not being a sycophant 
and a flatterer, and send him to prison for two years, to gratify 
the Attorney-General, who tells you that the Duke of Eich- 
mond is the best chief srovernor Ireland ever saw. 



74 SELECT SrEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

But the miscliief, I am told, lies in the art of the sentence. 
Why, all that it sajH is, that it is difficult to discover the strik- 
ing features that distinguish this from bad administrations. It 
does not, gentlemen, assert that no such striking features ex- 
ist, much less, does it assert that no features of that kind exist, 
or that such features, although not striking, are not easily dis- 
cernible. So that, really, you are here agaui required to con- 
vict a man for not flatteruig. He thinks an administration un- 
talented and sUly ; that is no crime ; he says, it has not bee n 
marked with talent or ability — that it has no striking fea- 
tures ; all this may be mistaken and false, yet there is nothing 
in it that resembles a crime. 

And, gentlemen, if it be true — if this be a foohsh adminis- 
tration, can it be an offence to say so? If it has had no 
striking featm-es to distinguish it from bad administrations, can 
it be criminal to say so ? Are you prepared to say, that not 
one word of truth can be told under no less a penalty than 
years of a dungeon and heavy fines ? 

Eecollect, that the Attorney-General told you that the press 
was the protection of the people against the government. 
Good Heaven ! gentlemen, how can it protect the people 
against the government, if it be a crime to say of that govern- 
ment that it has committed errors, dis^^lays little talent, and 
has no striking features ? Did the prosecutor mock you, when 
he talked of the protection the press afforded to the people ? 
If lie did not insult you by the admission of that upon which 
he will not allow you to act, let me ask, against what is the 
press to j)rotect the people ? When do the people want pro- 
tection ? — when the government is engaged in dehnquencies, 
oppression, and crimes. It is against these that the people 
want the protection of the press. Now, I put it to your plain 
sense, whether the press can afford such protection, if it be pun- 
ished for treating of these crimes ? 

Still more, can a shadow of protection be given by a press 
that is not permitted to mention the errors, the talents, and 
the striking features of an administration ? Here is a watch- 
man admitted by the Attorney-General to be at his post to 
warn the people of their danger, and the first thing that is 
done to this watchman is to knock him down and bring him to 



SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF JOHN MAGEE. 75 

a dungeon for announcing the danger lie is bound to disclose. 
I agree witli the Attorney-General, the press is a protection, 
but it is not in its silence or in its voice of flattery. It can 
protect only by speaking out when there is danger, or error, 
or want of ability. If the harshness of this tone be com- 
plained of, I ask, what is it the Attorney-General would have ? 
Does he wish that this protection should speak so as not to 
be understood ; or, I again repeat it, does he mean to delude 
us with the name and the mockery of protection ? Upon this 
ground, I defy you to find a verdict for the prosecutor, with- 
out declaring that he has been guilty of an attempt to deceive, 
when he talked of the protection of the press against errors, 
ignorance, and incapacity, which it is not to dare even to 
name. Gentlemen, upon this second paragTaph, I am en- 
titled to your verdict upon the Attorney-General's own ad- 
mission. 

He, indeed, passed on to the next sentence with an air of 
triumph, with the apparent certainty of its producing a con- 
viction ; I meet him upon it — I read it boldly — I will discuss 
it with you manfully — it is this : 

" They insulted, tliey oppressed, tliey miu'dered, and they deceived." 

The Attorney-General told us, rather ludicrously, that 
" They," meaning the Duke's predecessors, included, of course, 
himself. How a man could be included amongst his predeces- 
sors, it would be difficult to discover. It seems to be that mode 
of expression which would indicate that the Attorney-General, 
notwithstanding his foreign descent, has imbibed some of the 
language of the native Irish. But our blunders arise not, hke 
this, from a confusion of ideas ; they are generally caused by 
too great condensation of thought ; they are, indeed, frequently 
of the head, but never — never of the heart. Would I could 
say so much for the Attorney-General ; his blunder is not to 
be attributed to his cool and cautious head ; it sprung, I much 
fear, from, the misguided bitterness of the bigotry of his heart. 

Well, gentlemen, this sentence does, in broad and distinct 
terms, charge the jDredecessors of the Duke, but not the Duke 
himself, with insult, oppression, murder, and deceit. But it is 
history, gentlemen : are you prepared to silence the voice of 



76 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

history ? Are you disposed to suppress the recital of facts — 
the story of the events of former days ? Is the historian, and 
the publisher of history, to be exposed to indictment and pun- 
ishment ? 

Let me read for you two passages fi-om Doctor Leland's 
History of Ireland. I choose a remote period to avoid shock- 
ing your prejudices, by the recital of the more modern crimes 
of the faction to v.diich most of you belong. Attend to this 
passage, gentlemen. 

"Anno 1574. — A solemn peace and concord was made between the 
Earl of Essex and FeHrn O'Nial. However, at a feast, wherein the 
Earl entertained that chieftain, and at the end of theu' good cheer, 
O'Nial, with his wife, were seized ; their friends, who attended, were 
put to the sword before their faces. FeHrn, together with his wife 
and brother, were conveyed to Dubhn, where they were cut up in 
quarters." 

How would you have this fact described ? In what lady- 
hke terms is the future historian to mention this savage and 
brutal massacre? Yet Essex was an English nobleman — a 
predecessor of his Grace ; he was accomplished, gallant, and 
gay ; the envied paramour of the virgin queen ; and, if he 
afterwards fell on the scaffold, one of the race of the ancient 
Irish may be permitted to indulge the fond superstition that 
would avenge the royal blood of the O'Nial and of his consort, 
on their perfidious English murderer. 

But my soul fills with bitterness, and I will read of no more 
Irish miu'ders. I turn, however, to another page, and I will 
introduce to your notice another predecessor of his Grace the 
Duke of Eichmond. It is Grey, who, after the recall of Es- 
sex, commanded the English forces in Munster. The fort of 
Smerwick, in Kerry, surrendered to Grej'^ at discretion. It 
contained some Irish troops, and more than 700 Spaniards. 
The historian shall teU you the rest : 

"That mercy for which they sued was rigidly denied them. Wing- 
field was commissioned to disarm them, and when this service was per- 
formed, an English company was sent into the fort. 

"The Irish rebels found they were reserved for execution by martial 
law. 

" The Italian general and some officers were made prisoners of war ; 



SPEECH IN DEFENCE OE JOHN MAGEE. 77 

but the garrison was butcliered in cold blood ; nor is it -witliout pain, 
that we find a service so horrid and detestable, committed to Sir Walter 
Ealeigh." 

" The garrison was butcliered in cold blood," says tlie his- 
torian. Furnish us, Mr. Attorney-General, with gentle ac- 
cents and sweet words, to speak of this savage atrocity ; or 
will you indict the author? Alas! he is dead, full of years 
and respect — as faithful ah historian as the prejudices of his 
day would allow, and a beneficed clergyman of your charch. 

Gentlemen of the jury, what is the mild language of this 
paper compared with the indignant language of history ? 
Ealeigh — ^the ill-starred Ealeigh — fell a victim to a tyrant 
master, a corrupt or overawed jury, and a virulent Attorney- 
General; he was baited at the bar with language more scm-ri- 
lous and more foul than that you heard yesterday poured upon 
my chent. Yet, what atonement to civilization could his 
death afford for the horrors I have mentioned ? 

Decide, now, gentlemen, between those hbels — between that 
defamer's history and my client. He calls those predecessors 
of his Grace, murderers. History has left the living records 
of their crimes from the O'Nial, treacherously slaughtered, to 
the cruel cold butchery of the defenceless prisoners. Until I 
shall see the publishers of Leland and of Hume brought to 
your bar, I defy you to convict my chent. 

To show you that my client has treated these predecessors 
of his Grace with great lenity, I will introduce to your notice 
one, and only one more of them ; and he, too, fell on the scaf- 
fold — the unfortunate Strafford, the best servant a despotic 
king could desire. 

Amongst the means taken to raise money in Ireland, for 
James the First, and his son Charles, a proceeding called " a 
commission to inquu-e into defective titles," was invented. It 
was a scheme, gentlemen, to inquire of every man what right 
he had to his own property, and to have it solemnly and 
legally determined that he had none. To effectuate this 
scheme required great management, discretion, and integrity. 
First, there were 4,000 excellent horse raised for the purpose 
of being, as Strafford himself said, "good lookers on." The 
rest of the arrangement I would recommend to modern prac- 



78 8ELECT SrEECHES OF DANIEL o'CONNELL. 

tice ; it Avoiild save much trouble. I wiR shortly abstract it 
from two of Strafford's own letters. 

The oue appears to have been written by him to the Lord 
Treasurer; it is dated the 3d December, 1634. He begins 
with an apology for not having been more expeditious in this 
work of plunder, for his employers were, it seems, impatient 
at the melancholy waste of time. He then says : 

"Howbcit, I will redeem the time as much as I can, with such as may- 
give furtherance to the king's title, and will inquire out fit men to serve 
upon the juries." 

Take notice of that, gentlemen, I pray you ; perhaps you 
thought that the " packing of juries " was a modern invention 
— a new discovery. You see how gTeatly mistaken you were ; 
the thing has example and precedent to support it, and the 
authority of both are, in our law, quite conclusive. 

The next step was to corrupt — oh, no, to interest the wise 
and learned judges. But commentary becomes unnecessary, 
when I read for you this passage from a letter of his to the 
king, dated the 9th of December, 1636 : 

"Your Majesty was graciously pleased, upon my humble advice, to. 
bestow foui' shillings in the pound upon your Lord Chief Justice and 
Lord Chief Baron in this kingdom, fourth of the first yearly rent raised 
uijon the commission of defective title, which, upon observation, I find 
to be the best given that ever was. For now they do intend it, with a 
care and diligence, such as if it was their own private, and most certain 
gaining to themselves ; every four shilhngs once paid, shall better your 
levenue for ever after, at least five pounds." 

Thus, gentlemen of the jni'j, all was ready for the mockery 
of law and justice, called a trial. 

Now let me take any one of you ; let me place him here, 
where Mr. Magee stands ; let him have his property at stake"; 
let it be of less value, I pray you, than a compensation for two 
years' imprisonment ; it wiU, however, be of sufficient value to 
interest and rouse all yom* agony and anxiety. If you were 
so placed here, you would see before you the well-paid At- 
torney-General, perhaps, mahgnantly dehghted to pour his 
rancor upon you ; on the bench would sit the corrupt and 
partisan judge, and before you, on that seat which you now 



SPEECH IN DEFENCE OP JOHN MAGEE. 79 

occupy, would be placed tlie packed and predetermined jury. 
I beg, sir, to know what would be your feelings, your honor, 
your rage ; would you not compare tlie Attorney-General to 
the gambler who played with a loaded die, and then you 
would hear him talk, in solemn and monotonous tones, of his 
conscience ! Oh, his conscience, gentlemen of the jury ! 

But the times are altered. The press, the press, gentlemen, 
has effectuated a salutary revolution ; a commission of de- 
fective titles would no longer be tolerated ; the judges can no 

longer be bribed with money, and juries can no longer be 

I must not say it. Yes, they can, you know — we all know they 
can be still inquu-ed out, and " packed," as the technical phrase 
is. But you, who are not packed, you, who have been faMy 
selected, will see that the language of the pubhcation before 
us is mildness itself, compared with that which the truth of 
history requires — compared with that which history has already 
used. 

I proceed with this alleged Kbel. 

The next sentence is this — 

" The profligate, unprincipled Westmoreland." I throw 
down the paper and address myself in particular to some of 
you. There are, I see, amongst you some of our Bible dis- 
tributers, " and of our suppressors of vice." Distributers of 
Bibles, suppressors of vice — what call you profligacy ? What 
is it you would call profligacy ? Suppose the peerage was 
exposed for sale — set up at open auction — it was at that time 
a judicial oflice — -suppose that its price, the exact price of this 
judicial office, was accurately ascertained by daily experience 
— would you call that profligacy ? If pensions were multiplied 
beyond bounds and beyond example — ^if places were augment- 
ed until invention was exhausted, and then were subdivided 
and split into halves, so that two might take the emoluments 
of each, and no person do the duty — if these acts were resort- 
ed to in order to corrupt your representatives — would you, 
gentle suppressors of vice, call that profligacy ? 

If the father of children selected in the open day his adul- 
terous paramom^ — if the wedded mother of children displayed 
her crime unblushingly — ^if the assent of the titled or untitled 
wittol to his own shame was purchased with the people's 



80 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL o'CONNELL. 

money — if this scene — ^if these were enacted in the open day, 
would you call that x^rofligacy, sweet distributers of Bibles? 
The women of Ii'eland have always been beauteous to a pro- 
verb ; they were, without an exception, chaste beyond the 
terseness of a jDroverb to express ; they are stUl as chaste as in 
former days, but the depraved example of a depraved court 
has furnished some exceptions, and the action of criminal con- 
versation, before the time of Westmoreland unknown, has 
since become more familiar to our courts of justice. 

Call you the sad example which produced those exceptions 
— call you that profligacy, suppressors of vice and Bible dis- 
tributers ? The vices of the poor are within the reach of con- 
trol ; to supj)ress them, you can call in aid the chiu'chwarden 
and the constable ; the justice of the peace will readily aid 
you, for he is a gentleman — the Court of Sessions will punish 
those vices for you by fine, by imprisonment, and, if you are 
urgent, by whipping. But, suppressors of vice, who shall aid 
you to suppress the vices of the great ? Are you sincere, or 
are you, to use your own phraseology, whitewashed tombs — 
painted charnel-houses ? Be ye hypocrites ? If you are not 
— if you be sincere — (and, oh, how I wish that you were) — if 
you be sincere, I will steadily requii'e to know of you, what 
aid you expect, to suppress the vices of the rich and great ? 
Who will assist you to suppress those vices? The church- 
warden ! — why lie, I beheve, handed them into the best pew 
in one of your cathedrals, that they might lovingly hear Di- 
vine service together. The constable ! — absurd. The justice 
of the peace 1 — ^no, upon his honor. As to the Court of Ses- 
sions, you cannot expect it to interfere; and my lords the 
judges are really so busy at the assizes, in hurrying the grand 
juries through the presentments, that there is no leisure to 
look after the scandalous faults of the great. Who, then, sin- 
cere and candid suppressors of vice, can aid you? The 
Press; the Press alone talks of the profligacy of the great; 
and, at least, shames into decency those whom it may fail to 
correct. The Press is your, but yom* only assistant. Go, 
then, men of conscience, men of religion — go, then, and con- 
vict Jolm Magee, because he jDublished that Westmoreland 
was profligate and unprincipled as a lord heutenant — do, con- 



SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF JOHN MAGEE. 81 

vict, and tlien return to your distribution of Bibles and to 
your attacks upon the recreations of the poor, under the name 
of vices. 

Do, convict the only aid which virtue has, and distribute 
your Bibles that you may have the name of being rehgious ; 
upon your sincerity depends my chent's prospect of a verdict. 
Does he lean upon a broken reed ? 

I pass on from the sanctified portion of the jury which I 
have latterly addressed, and I call the attention of you all to 
the next member of the sentence — 

" The cold-hearted and cruel Camden." 

Here I have your prejudices all armed against me. In the 
administration of Camden, your faction was cherished and 
triumphant. Will you prevent him to be called cold and 
cruel? Alas! to-day, why have I not men to address who 
Avould listen to me for the sake of impartial justice ! But 
even with you the case is too powerful to allow me to despair. 

Well, I do say, " the cold and cruel Camden." Why, on one 
circuit, during his administration, there were one hundred 
individuals tried before one judge ; of these ninety-eight were 
capitally convicted, and ninety-seven hanged ! I understand 
one escaped ; but he was a soldier who murdered a peasant, 
or something of that trivial nature — ninety-seven victims in 
one circuit ! 

In the meantime, it was necessary, for the purposes of the 
Union, that the flame of rebellion should be fed. The meet- 
ings of the rebel colonels in the north were, for a length of 
time, regularly reported to government ; but the rebeUion was 
not then ripe enough ; and whilst the fruit was coming to ma- 
turity, under the fostering hand of the administration, the 
wretched dupes atoned on the gallows for allowing themselves 
to be deceived. 

In the meantime the soldiery were turned in at free quar- 
ters amongst the wives and daughters of the peasantry ! 

Have you heard of Abercrombie, the valiant and the good 
— ^he who, mortally wounded, neglected his wound until vic- 
tory was ascertained — he who allowed his hfe's stream to flow 
unnoticed because his country's battle was in suspense — he 
who died the martyr of victory — ^he who commenced the ca- 



82 SELECT SPEECHES OP DANIEL o'CONNELL. 

reer of glory on the land, and taught French insolence, than 
which there is nothing so permanent — even transplanted, it 
exliibits itself to the third and foui'th generation — he taught 
French insolence, that the British and Irish soldier was as 
much his superior by land, as the sailor was confessedly by 
sea — he, in short, who commenced that career wliich has since 
placed the Irish WeUington on the highest pinnacle of glory, 
Abercrombie and Moore were ia Ireland under Camden. 
Moore, too, has since fallen at the moment of triumph — 
Moore, the best of sons, of brothers, of friends, of men — the 
soldier and the scholar — the soul of reason and the heart of 
pity — Moore has, in documents of which you may plead igno- 
rance, left his opinions upon record with respect to the cruelty 
of Camden's administration. But you aU have heard of Aber- 
crombie's proclamation, for it amounted to that ; he "proclaimed 
that cruelty in terms the most unequivocal ; he stated to the 
soldiery and to the nation, that the conduct of -the Camden ad- 
ministration had rendered " the soldiery formidable to all but 
the enemy." 

Was there no cruelty in thus degrading the British soldier ? 
And say, was not the process by which that degradation was 
effectuated cruelty ? Do, then, contradict Abercrombie, upon 
your oaths, if you dare ; but, by doing so, it is not my client 
alone you will convict — ^you will also convict yourselves of the 
foul crime of perjury. 

I now come to the third branch of this sentence ; and here 
I have an easy task. All, gentlemen, that is said to the arti- 
ficer and superintendent of the Union is this — " the artful and 
treacherous Cornwalhs." Is it necessary to prove that the 
Union was effectuated by artifice and treachery ? For my 
part, it makes my blood boil when I think of the unhappy pe- 
riod which was contrived and seized on to carry it into effect ; 
one year sooner, and it would have made a revolution — one 
year later, and it would hare been for ever impossible to carry 
it. The moment was artfully and treacherously seized on, 
and our country, that was a nation for countless ages, has 
dwindled into a province, and her name and her glory are ex- 
tinct for ever. 

I should not waste 9 moment upon this part of the case, but 



SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF JOHN MAGEE. 83 

tliat the gentlemen at the other side who opposed that meas- 
ure have furnished me with some topics which I may not, can- 
not omit. Indeed Mr. Magee deserves no verdict from any 
Irish jury, who can hesitate to think that the contriver of the 
Union is treated with too much lenity in this sentence ; he 
fears your disapprobation for speaking with so httle animosity 
of the artificer of the Union. 

There was one piece of treachery committed at that period, 
at which both you and I equally rejoice ; it was the breach of 
faith towards the leading CathoHcs ; the written promises 
made them at that period have been since printed ; I rejoice 
with you that they were not fulfilled ; when the Cathohc 
trafficked for his own advantage upon his country's miseries, 
he deserved to be deceived. For this mockery, I thank the 
ComwaUis administration. I rejoice, also, that my first intro- 
duction to the stage of pubhc life, was in the opposition to 
that measure. 

In humble and obscure distance, I followed the footsteps of 
my present adversaries. What their sentiments were then of 
the authors of the Union, I beg to read to you ; I will read 
them from a newspaper set up for the mere purpose of oppos- 
ing the Union, and conducted under the control of these gen- 
tlemen. If their editor should be gravely denied, I shall only 
reply — " Oh, cease your funning."'^ 

The charge of being a Jacobin, was at that time made 
against the present Attorney-General — ^him, plain William 
Saurin — in the very terms, and with just as much truth as he 
now applies it to my client. His reply shall serve for that of 
Mr. Magee. I take it from the anti-Union of the 22nd March, 
1800. 

"To the charge of Jacobin, Mr. Saurin said he knew not what it 
meant, as appUed to him, except it was an opposition to the will of 
the British minister." 

So says Mr. Magee ; but, gentlemen, my eye lights upon an- 
other passage of Mr. Saurin's in the same speech from which 
I have quoted the above. It was in these words : 

* A pampMet full of wit and talent under this title was pubHshed by the So- 
licitor-Greneral. 



84 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

"Mr. Saui'in admitted, that debates might sometimes produce agi- 
tations, but that was the ^jrice necessarily paid for hberty." 

Oh, liow I thank this good Jew for the word. Yes, agita- 
tion is, as Mr. Saurin well remarked, the price necessarily paid 
for Hbertj. We have paid the price, gentlemen, and the hon- 
est man refuses to give us the goods. 

Now, gentlemen, of this Mr. Saurin, then an agitator, I beg 
leave to read the opinion upon tliis Union, the author of 
which we have only called artful and treacherous. From this 
speech of the 13th March, 1800, 1 select these passages : 

" Mr. Saurin said he felt it his duty to the crown, to the country, and 
to his famUy, to warn the minister of the dreadful consequences of per- 
severing in a measure which the people of Ireland almost unanimously 
disliked." 

And again — 

" He, for one, would assert the principles of the glorious revolution, 
and boldly declare in the face of the nation, that when the sovereign 
power dissolved the compact that existed between the government and 
the people, that moment the right of resistance accrues. 

" Whether it would be prudent in the people to avail themselves of that 
right would be another question. But if a legislative union were forced 
on the country, against the will of its inhabitants, it would be a nullity, 
and resistance to it would be a struggle against usui-pation, and not a 
resistance against law." 

May I be permitted just to observe, how much more violent, 
this agitator of the year 1800, than we poor and timid agita- 
tors of the year 1813. "When did we talk of resistance being 
a. question of prudence ? Shame upon the men who call us 
intemperate, and yet remember their own violence. 

But, gentlemen, is the Attorney-General at liberty to change 
the nature of things with his own official and. professional 
prospects ? I am ready to admit that he receives thousands 
of pounds by the year of the public moneys, in his office of 
Attorney-General — thousands from the Crown-Solicitor — thou- 
sands, for doing httle work, from the Gustom-House ; but 
does all this pubhc booty with which he is loaded alter the 
nature of things, or prevent that from being a deceitful 
measure, brought about by artful and treacherous means, 
against which Mr. Saurin, in 1800, preached the holy doc- 



SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF JOHN MAGEE. 85 

trine of insurrection, sounded the tocsin of resistance, and 
summoned the people of the land to battle against it, as 
against usurpation ? 

In 1800, he absolves the subjects from their allegiance — if 
the usurpation, styled the Union, will be carried — and he, 
this identical agitator, in 1813, indicts a man, and calls him a 
ruffian, for speaking of the contrivers of the Union, not as 
usurpers, but as artful, treacherous men. Gentlemen, pity the 
situation in which he has placed himself ; and pray, do not 
think of inflicting punishment, upon my client for his extreme 
moderation. 

It has been coarsely urged, and it will, I know, be urged in 
the splendid misrepresentations with which the Sohcitor-Gen- 
eral can so well distort the argument he is unable to meet — it 
will, I know, be urged by him, that having estabUshed the 
right to use this last paragraph — having proved that the pre- 
decessors of the Duke were oppressors and murderers, and 
profligate, and treacherous, that the Hbel is only aggravated 
thereby, as the first paragraph compares and combines the 
Duke of Richmond with the worst of his predecessors. 

This is a most fallacious assertion; and here it is that I 
could wish I had to address a dispassionate and an enlight- 
ened jury. You are not, you know you are not, of the selec- 
tion of my chent. Had he the poor privilege of the sheep- 
stealer, there are, at least, ten of you who should never have 
been on his jury. But the jury he would select is not such a 
jury in his favor, as has been impanelled against him ; he 
desires no favor ; he would desu-e only that the most respect- 
able and unprejudiced of your city should be selected for his 
trial ; his only ambition would be perfect impartiality ; he 
would desire, and I should desire for him, a jury whose ver- 
dict of conviction, if they did convict him, would produce a 
sense of error and a feeling more painful to his mind of being 
wrong than a star-chamber sentence. 

If I had to address such a jury, how easily could I show 
them that there is no comparison — ^no attempt at simihtude. 
On the contrary, the object of the writer is clearly to make a 
contrast. Grey murdered ; but he was an able statesman ; his 
massacre was a crime in itself, but eminently useful to his em- 



86 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

ployers ; it contributed mainly to secure tlie forfeiture of the 
overgi'own territories of the House of Desmond. Essex was a 
murderer, but his extreme of vice was accompanied by great 
military services ; he was principally instrumental in effectu- 
ating the conquest of Ireland — even his crimes served the 
cause of his royal mistress, and the teiTitory of the slaugh- 
tered O'Nial became shire land; he had terrific cruelty to 
answer for, but he could give it some answer in the splendor 
and solidity of his services. So of Strafford — he was an 
eminent oppressor, but he was also eminently useful to his 
royal master. 

As to the Duke of Eichmond, the contrast is intended to be 
complete — he has neither great crimes nor great vii'tues. He 
did not murder, hke Essex and Grey, but he did not render 
any splendid services. In short, his administration has been 
directly the reverse of these. It has been marked by errors 
and not crimes. It has not displayed talents as they did ; and 
it has no striking features as they had. Such is the fair, 
the rational, and the just construction which a fair, rational, 
and just jury would put upon it. 

Indeed, the Attorney-General seems to feel it was necessary 
for him to resort to other topics, in order to induce you to con- 
vict upon this part of the case. He tells you that this is the 
second time that the Duke of Richmond has been called a 
murderer. Gentlemen, in this indictment there is no allega- 
tion that the Duke is styled a murderer by this pubUcation ; 
if there had been, he should be readily acquitted, even for the 
variance ; and when the Attorney-General resoiis to Barry's 
case, he does it to inflame your passions, and mislead your un- 
derstandings — and then what has the Irish Magazine to do 
with this trial ? 

Walter Cox, with his Irisli Magazine, is as good a Protestant 
as the king's Attorney-General, and probably quite as sincere 
in the profession of that rehgion, though by no means as much 
disposed to persecute those who differ from him in religious 
belief. Indeed, if he were a persecutor of his countrymen, he 
would not be where he is — in prison ; he would probably en- 
joy a fuU share of the pubhc plunder, and which is now lav- 
ished on the stupid joui'nals in the pay of the Castle — from the 



SPEECH IN DEFENCE OP JOHN MAGEE. 87 

versatile, venal, and verbose correspondent, to tlie equally dull 
and corrupt Dublin Journal. 

It is, however, not true, that he is in jail because he pub- 
lished what is called a libel. The Attorney-General talked 
with a gloating pleasure of the miseries poor "Watty Cox en- 
dures in jail — miseries that seem to give poignancy and zest 
to the enjoyments of his prosecutor. I will make him happy ; 
let him return from this court to his luxuries, and when he 
finds himself at his table, surrounded with every delicacy, and 
every profusion, remember that his prisoner Walter Cox is 
starving. I envy him not this rehsh, but I cannot suffer him 
to mislead you. Cox is not in jail because he pubhshed a 
libel ; he is there because he is poor. His time of imprison- 
ment expired last February, but he was condemned to pay a 
fine of £300, and having no money, he has since remained in 
jail. It is his poverty, therefore, and not his crime, that detains 
him within the fangs of the Attorney-General — if, indeed, there 
be any greater crime in society than being poor. 

And next, the Attorney-General makes a beautiful eulogium 
on Magna Charta. There we agree. I should indeed prefer 
seeing the principles of that great charter called into practical 
effect, to hearing any palinode, however beautiful, said or sung 
on its merits. But what recommendation can Magna Charta 
have for poor Cox ? That charter of Hberty expressly pro- 
vides that no man shah be fined beyond what he can pay. A 
very simple and natural provision against political severity. 
But Cox is fined X300 when he is not worth a single shilling. 
He appealed to this court for rehef, and quotes Magna Charta. 
Your lordship was not pleased to give him any rehef. He 
applies to tho Court of Exchequer, and that Court, after 
hearing the Attorney-General against him, finds itself unable 
to give any relief ; and, after all this, the unfortunate man is 
to be tantalized with hearing that the Attorney-General con- 
trived to couple his case with the praise of the great charter 
of liberty — a most unlucky coincidence — almost enough to 
drive him, in whose person that charter is violated, into a 
state of insanity. 

Poor "Watty Cox is a coarse fellow, and, I think, he would 
be apt to reply to that praise in the profane and contemptuous 



88 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL CONNELL. 

rhyme of Cromwell ; most assuredly he has no reason to treat 
this useless law with great reverence. It would, indeed, ap- 
pear as if the prosecutor eulogized Magna Charta only to give 
more briUiancy to his triumph, which he has obtaiued in the 
person of poor Cox over it. 

The next topic of the Attorney-General's triumphant abuse 
was the book entitled, " The Statement of the Penal Laws." He 
called it a convicted book. He exulted that the pubhsher was 
in prison ; he traduced the author, and he distorted and mis- 
represented the spiiifc and meaning of that book. As to the 
pubhsher, he is, I admit, in prison. The Attorney-General 
has had the pleasure of tearing a respectable citizen, of irre- 
proachable character and conduct, from his wife and the little 
children who were rendered comfortable by his honest, perse- 
vering industry, and he has immured him in a dungeon. I 
only congratulate him on his victory. 

As to the author, he is just the reverse of what the Attor- 
ney-General would wish him to be ; he is a man of fortune ; 
he is an able lawyer — a professional scholar — an accomphshed 
gentleman — a sincere friend to his country, which he has orna- 
mented and served. As to the book, it is really ludicrous to 
an extreme degree of comicality to call it a convicted book. 
There are about 400 pages in the work ; it contains an elabo- 
rate, unexaggerated, and, I think, softened detail of the laws 
which aggrieve the Cathohcs of Ireland, and of the practical 
results of those laws. Such a system, to which the Attorney- 
General is wedded, as much as to his own emolument, must 
have excited no small share of irritation in his rniad. It pro- 
duced a powerful sensation on the entu'e party to which he 
belongs. Abundant attempts were made to answer it : they 
were paid for out of the pubhc money ; they totally failed, 
and yet if the book had been erroneous, there could be noth- 
ing easier than its confutation. 

If that book had been mistaken in matter of law, or exag- 
gerated in matter of fact, its refutation would have been found, 
where we have found and proved its perfect accuracy, in the 
statute book and in the daily experience of every individual in 
Ii-eland. Truth, you are told by the prosecutor, is no defence 
in case of hbel ; but certainly this book was much the more 



SPEECH IN DEFENCE OP JOHN MAGEE. 89 

provoking for being true ; and yet, gentlemen, with the most 
powerful incentives to prosecute this book, the Attorney- 
General has been compelled, most reluctantly, to spare every 
word of the 400 pages of text and margin, and has been una- 
ble to find any pretext for an indictment, save in a paltry note 
containing eight lines and a half, and three marks of admi- 
ration. 

My lords, I address your lordships particularly on the three 
notes of admiration, because they formed a prominent ground 
in your lordship's learned argument, when you decided that 
the passage was a libel per se. Yes, gentlemen, admire again, 
I pray you, the sohdity and briUiancy of our law, in which 
three marks of admiration are of wonderful efficacy in send- 
ing a man to prison. But with the exception of the note of 
eight and a half hues, the book has borne the severest criti- 
cism of fact and of law. It has defied, and continues to defy, 
the present Attorney-General and his well-assorted juries ; 
and, as to the note which he indicted, it contained only a 
remark on the execution of a man who, whether innocent or 
guilty, was tried in such a manner, that a gentleman of the 
Irish bar, his counsel, threw up his brief in disgust ; and when 
the judge who presided at the trial ordered the counsel to re- 
main and defend Barry, that counsel swore, in this court, that 
he rejected the judge's mandate with contempt. 

"What a mighty triumph was the conviction proved against 
this note on Barry's case ! And may one be permitted mourn- 
fully to ask, whether the indignation, which might have pro- 
duced indiscretion in speaking of Barry's fate, was a very cul- 
pable quahty in a feeling mind, prone to detest the horrors 
with which human blood is sometimes shed under the forms 
and mockery of trial ? But that conviction, although it will 
erase the note, will not stay the demand which an intelhgent 
pubHc make for this valuable work. Abeady have two valua- 
ble editions of it been sold, and a third edition is loudly called 
for, and about to appear. 

What, in the meantime, has been the fate of the answers ? I 
see two booksellers amongst you ; they will tell you that the 
answers are recollected only by the loss they have produced 
to them, and by the cumbering of their shelves. Such is the 



90 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

result of the loyal triumph, of his Grace the Duke of Rich- 
mond's administration. May such in every age be the fruits 
of every prosecutor of free discussion, and of the assertion of 
pohtical truth ! 

I have followed the Attorney-General through his discus- 
sion upon Walter Cox, and "The Statement of the Penal 
Laws," without being able exactly to conjecture his motives for 
introducing them. As to Cox, it appears to be the mere grati- 
fication of his deUght at the misery to which that unfortunate 
man is reduced. As to " the book," I can only conjecture that 
his wish is to insinuate to you that the author of " the book " 
and of this pubhcation is the same. If that were his design, 
it may be enough to say, that he has not x3roved the fact, and, 
therefore, in fairness, it ought not at all to influence your de- 
cision. I go further and tell him, that the fact is not so ; that 
the author is a different person ; that the writer of this alleged 
hbel is a Protestant — a man of fortune — a man of that rank 
and estima,tion, that even the Attorney- General, were I to an- 
nounce liis name, which my chent will never do, or suffer his 
advocate to do, that name would extort respect, even from the 
Attorney-General himself. 

He has, in his usual fashion, calumniated the spirit and 
object of " The Statement of the Penal Laws." He says it 
imputes murder and every other crime to persons in high sta- 
tions, as resulting from their being Protestants. He says that 
it attributes to the Lord Lieutenant the committing mui'der 
on a Catholic, because he himself is a Protestant. Gentlemen, 
I wish you had read that book ; if you did, it would be quite 
unnecessary for me to contradict those assertions of the Attor- 
ney-General Li fact, there never were assertions more un- 
founded : that book contains notliing that could warrant his 
description of it ; on the contrary, the book seeks to establish 
this position, that the grievances which the Lish CathoHcs 
suffer, are not attributable to the Protestant religion — that 
they are repugnant to the spirit of that religion, and are attri- 
butable, simply and singly, to the spirit of monopoly, and tone 
of superiority, generated and fostered by the system of exclu- 
sion, upon which the Penal Code rests. 

The author of that book is confessedly a CathoHc ; yet the 



SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF JOHN MAGEE. 91 

book states, and the Attorney-General heard the passage twice 
read in this court, that " if Roman Cathohcs were placed, by 
unjust laws, in the situation in which the Irish Protestants 
now are placed, they would oppress and exclude precisely as 
the Protestants now do." In short, his statement and rea- 
sonings are founded on this, that it is unjust to give any reli- 
gion exclusive political advantages ; because, whatever that 
rehgion may be, the result will necessarily prove oppressive 
and insulting towards the less favored sect. He argues not 
exclusively against any particular rehgion, but from natural 
causes operating on human beings. His book may be a libel 
on human nature, but it is no more a hbel on the Protestant 
than on the Cathohc rehgion. It draws no other inference 
than this, that Cathohcs and Protestants, under similar cir- 
cumstances, would act precisely in the same way. 

Having followed the prosecutor through this weary digres- 
sion, I return to the next sentence of this pubhcation. Yet I 
cannot — I must detain you still a'httle longer fi'om it, whilst I 
supplicate your honest indignation, if in your resentments 
there be aught of honesty, against the mode in which the At- 
torney-General has introduced the name of our aged and 
afflicted sovereign. He says, this is a libel on the king, be- 
cause it imputes to him a selection of improper and criminal 
chief governors. Gentlemen, this is the very acme of servile 
doctrine. It is the most unconstitutional doctrine that could 
be uttered : it supposes that the sovereign is responsible for 
the acts of his servants, whilst the constitution declares that 
the king can do no wrong, and that even for his personal acts, 
his servants shaU be personally responsible. Thus, the Attor- 
ney-General reverses for you the constitution in theory ; and, 
in point of fact, where can be found, in this pubhcation, any, 
even the shghtest aUusion to his Majesty ? The theory is 
against the Attorney-General, and yet, contrary to the fact, 
and against the theory, he seeks to enhst another prejudice of 
yours against Mr. Magee. 

Prejudice did I call it? oh, no! it is no prejudice; that 
sentiment which combines respect with affection for my aged 
sovereign, suffering under a calamity with which heaven has 
willed to visit him, but which is not due to any defatdt of his. 



92 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

There never was a sentiment that I should wish to see more 
cherished — more honored. To yon the king may appear an 
object of respect ; to his Cathohc subjects he is one of vene- 
ration ; to them he has been a bountiful benefactor. To the 
utter disregard of your aldermen of Skinner's Alley, and the 
more pompous magnates of William street, his Majesty pro- 
cured, at his earnest soUcitation from parliament, the restora- 
tion of much of our hberties. He disregarded your anti-Po- 
pery petitions. He treated with calm indifference the ebulli- 
tions of your bigotry ; and I ovv^e to him that I have the 
honor of standing in the proud situation from which I am 
able, if not to protect my client, at least to pour the indignant 
torrent of my discourse against his enemies, and those of his 
country. 

The publication to which I now recall you, goes to describe 
the effects of the facts which I have shown you to have been 
drawn from the undisputed and authentic history of former 
times. I have, I hope, convinced you, that neither Leland 
nor Hume could have been indicted for stating those facts, 
and it would be a very strange perversion of principle, which 
would allow you to convict Mr. Magee for that which has 
been stated by other writers, not only without punishment, but 
with applause. 

That part of the paragraph which relates to the present day 
is in these words : 

" Since that period the complexion of the times has changed — the 
countiy has advanced — it has outgrown submission, and some forms, at 
least, must now be observed towards the people." 

The system, however, is still the same ; it is the old play 
with new decorations, presented in an age somewhat more en- 
Hghtened ; the principle of government remains unaltered — a 
principle of exclusion which debars the majority of the peo- 
ple fi'om the enjoyment of those privileges that are possessed 
by the minority, and which must, therefore, maintain itself by 
all those measures necessary for a government founded on 
injustice. 

The prosecutor insists that this is the most libellous part of 
the entire pubhcation. I am glad he does so ; because if 



SPEECH IN DEFENCE OP JOHN MAGEE. 93 

there be amongst you a single particle of discrimination, you 
cannot fail to perceive that this is not a hbel — that this para- 
graph cannot constitute any crime. It states that the present 
is a system of exclusion. Surely, it is no crime to say so ; it 
is what you aU say. It is what the Attorney-General himseK 
gloried iu. This is, said he, exclusively a Protestant govern- 
ment. Mr. Magee and he are agreed. Mr. Magee adds, 
that a principle of exclusion, on account of rehgion, is found- 
ed on injustice. Gentlemen, if a Protestant were to be ex- 
cluded from any temporal advantages upon the score of his 
rehgion, would not you say that the principle upon which he 
was excluded was unjust ? That is precisely what Mr. Magee 
says; for the principle which excludes the Catholic in Ire- 
land, would exclude the Protestant in Spain and in Portugal, 
and there you clearly admit its injustice. So that, really, you 
would condemn yourselves, and your own opinions, and the 
right to be a Protestant in Spain and Portugal, if you con- 
demn this sentiment. 

But I would have you further observe that this is no more 
than the discussion of an abstract principle of government ; it 
arraigns not the conduct of any individual, or of any adminis- 
tration ; it only discusses and decides upon the moral fitness 
of a certain theory, on which the management of the affah's of 
Ireland has been conducted. If this be a crime, we are aU 
criminals ; for this question, whether it be just or not to ex- 
clude from power and office a class of the people for religion, 
is the subject of daily — of hourly discussion. The Attorney- 
General says it is quite just ; I proclaim it to be unjust — ob- 
viously unjust. At aU public meetings, in aU private companies, 
this point is decided in different ways, according to the tem- 
per and the interest of individuals. Indeed, it is but too much 
the topic of every man's discourse ; and the jails and the bar- 
racks of the country would not contain the hundredth part of 
those whom the Attorney-General would have to crowd into 
them, if it be penal to call the principle of exclusion unjust. 
In this court, without the least danger of interruption or re- 
proof, I proclaim the injustice of that principle. 

I will then ask whether it be lawful to print that which it is 
not unlawful to proclaim in the face of a court of justice ? And 



94 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

above all, I will ask whether it can be criminal to discuss the 
abstract principles of government ? Is the theory of the law a 
prohibited subject ? I had understood that there was no right 
so clear and undoubted as that of discussing abstract and 
theoretic principles, and their apphcabiUty to practicable j)ur- 
poses. For the first time do I hear this disputed ; and now 
see what it is the Attorney-General prohibits. He insists upon 
punishing Mr. Magee ; first, because he accuses his adminis- 
tration of " errors ;" secondly, because he charges them with 
liot being distinguished for " talents ;" thirdly, because he can- 
not discover theh " striking features ;" and fourthly, because 
he discusses an " abstract principle !" 

This is quite intelligible — this is quite tangible. I begin to 
imderstand what the Attorney- General means by the Uberty of 
the Press ; it means a prohibition of printing anything except 
praise, respecting " the errors, the talents, or the striking fea- 
tures " of any administration, and of discussing any abstract 
principle of government. Thus the forbidden subjects are er- 
rors, talents, striking features, and principles. Neither the 
theory of the government nor its practices are to be discussed ; 
you may, indeed, praise them ; you may call the Attorney- 
General " the best and wisest of men ;" you may call his lord- 
ship the most learned and impartial of all possible chief justices ; 
you may, if you have x^owers of visage sufficient, call the Lord 
Lieutenant the best of all imaginable governors. That, gen- 
tlemen, is the boasted hberty of the press — the liberty that ex- 
ists in Constantinople — the hberty of applying the most ful- 
some and unfounded flattery, but not one word of censure or 
reproof. 

Here is an idol worthy of the veneration of the Attorney- 
General. Yes ; he talked of his veneration for the Hberty of 
the press ; he also talked of its being a protection to the peo- 
ple against the government. Protection ! not against errors — 
not against the want of talents or striking features — nor 
against the eflbrt of any unjust principle — protection ! against 
what is it to protect ? Did he not mock you ? Did he not 
plainly and palpably delude you, when he talked of the protec- 
tion of the press ? Yes. To his inconsistencies and contra- 
dictions he calls on you to sacrifice your consciences ; and be- 



SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF JOHN MAGEE. 95 

cause you are no-Popery men, and distributers of Bibles, and 
aldermen of Skinner's Alley, and Protestant petitioners, lie re- 
quires of you to brand your souls with, perjury. You cannot 
escape it ; it is, it must be perjury to find a verdict for a man 
who gravely admits that the liberty of the jpress is recognized 
by law, and that it is a venerable object, and yet calls for 
your verdict upon the ground that there is no such thing in ex- 
istence as that which he has admitted, that the law recognizes, 
and that he himself venerates. 

Clinging to the fond but faint hope that you are not capa- 
ble of sanctioning, by your oaths, so monstrous an inconsis- 
tency, I lead you to the next sentence upon this record. 

"Althongh his Grace does not appear to know wliat are the quali- 
ties necessary for a judge in Canada, or for an aid-de-camp in waiting 
at a court, he surely cannot be ignorant of what are requisites for a lord 
lieutenant." 

This appears to be a very innocent sentence ; yet the Attor- 
ney-General, the venerator of that protection of the people 
against a bad government — the liberty of the press — tells you 
that it is a gross libel to impute so much ignorance to his 
Grace. As to the aid-de-camp, gentlemen, whether he be se- 
letsd for the brilliancy of his spurs, the polish of his boots, or 
the precise angle of his cocked hat, are grave considerations 
which I refer to you. Decide upon these atrocities, I pray you. 
But as to the judge in Canada, it cannot be any reproach to 
his. Grace to be ignorant of his qualifications. The old French 
law prevails in Canada, and there is not a lawyer at the Irish 
bar, except, perhaps, the Attorney-General, who is sufiiciently 
acquaiated with that law to know how far any man may be fit 
for the station of judge in Canada. 

If this be an ignorance without reproach in Irish lawyers, 
and if there be any reproach in it, I feel it not, whilst I avow 
that ignorance — yet, surely it is absurd to torture it into a 
calumny against the Lord Lieutenant — a military man, and no 
lawyer. I doubt whether it would be a libel if my chent had 
said, that his Grace was ignorant of the qualities necessary 
for a judge in Ireland — for a chief judge, my lord. He has 
not said so, however, gentlemen, and true or false, that is not 



96 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

now the question under consideration. We are in Canada at 
present, gentlemen, in a ludicrous search for a Ubel in a sen - 
tence of no great point or meaning. If you are sapient enough 
to suspect that it contains a Ubel, yoiu- doubt can only arise 
from not comprehending it ; and that, I own, is a doubt diffi- 
cult to remove. But I mock you when I talk of this insig- 
nificant sentence. 

I shall read the next paragraph at fuU length. It is con- 
nected with the Canadian sentence : 

" Therefore, were an appeal to be made to liim in a dispassionate and 
sober moment, we might candidly confess that the Irish would not be 
disappointed in their hopes of a successor, though they would behold 
the same smiles, experience the same sincerity, and witness the same 
disposition towards couciUation. 

"What, though they were deceived in 1795, and found the mildness of 
aFitzwilUam a false omen of concord ; though they were duped in 1800, 
and found that the privileges of the CathoHcs did not follow the extinc- 
tion of the parliament, yet, at his departure, he wiU, no doubt, state 
good grounds for future expectation ; that his administration was not 
the time for Emancipation, but that the season is fast approaching ; that 
there were ' existing circumstances, ' but that now the people may rely 
upon the virtues even of an hereditary Prince ; that they should continue 
to worship the false idol ; that their cries must, at least, be heard ; and 
that, if he has not complied, it is only because he has not spoken. In 
short, his Grace will in no way vary from the uniform conduct observed 
by most of his predecessors, first preaching to the confidence of the 
people,* then playing upon their credulity. 

"He came over ignorant — he soon became prejudiced, and then he 
became intemperate. He takes from the people their money ; he eats 
of their bread, and di-inks of their wine ; in return, he gives them a bad 
government, and, at his dei^arture, leaves them more distracted than 
ever. His Grace commenced his reign by flattery, he continued it in 
folly, he accomiaanied it with violence, and he will conclude it with 
falsehood." 

There is one part of this sentence, for which I most respect- 
fully solicit your indulgence and pardon. Be not exasperated 
with us for talking of the mildness of Lord FitzwiUiam, or of 
his administration. But, notwithstanding the violence any 
praise of him has excited amongst you, come dispassionately, I 
pray you, to the consideration of the paragi-aph. Let us ab- 
stract the meaning of it from the superfluous words. It cer- 



SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF JOHN MAGEE. 97 

tainly does tell you, that liis Grace came over ignorant of Irisli 
affairs, and lie acquired prejudices upon tliose subjects, and lie 
has become intemperate. Let us discuss this part sepa- 
rately from the other matter suggested by the paragraph in 
question. That the Duke of Richmond came over to Ireland 
ignorant of the details of our domestic policy cannot be mat- 
ter either of surprise or of any reproach. A mihtary man en- 
gaged in these pursuits which otherwise occupy persons of 
his rank, altogether unconnected with Ireland, he could not 
have had any inducement to make himself acquainted with 
the details of our barbarous wrongs, of our senseless party 
quarrels, and criminal feuds ; he was not stimulated to examine 
them by any interest, nor could any man be attracted to study 
them by taste. It is, therefore, no censure to talk of his igno- 
rance — of that with which it would be absurd to expect that 
he should be acquainted ; and the knowledge of which would 
neither have served, nor exalted, nor amused him. 

Then, gentlemen, it is said he became " prejudiced." Preju- 
diced may sound harsh in your ears ; but you are not,, at least 
you ought not, to decide upon the sound — ^it is the sense of 
the word that should determine you. Now what is the sense 
of the word " prejudice " here ? It means the having adopted 
precisely the opinions which every one of you entertain. By 
"prejudice" the writer means, and can mean, nothing but 
such sentiments as you cherish. "When he talks of prejudice, 
he intends to convey the idea that the Duke took up the opi- 
nion, that the few ought to govern the many in Ireland ; that 
there ought to be a favored and an excluded class in Ireland ; 
that the burdens of the state ought to be shared equally, but its 
benefits conferred on a few. Such are the ideas conveyed by 
the word prejudice ; and I fearlessly ask you, is it a crime to 
impute to his Grace these notions which you yourselves enter- 
tain ? Is he calumniated — is he Hbelled, when he is charged 
with concurring with you, gentlemen of the jury ? Will you, 
by a verdict of conviction, stamp your own pohtical sentiments 
with the seal of reprobation ? If you convict my client, you 
do this : you decide that it is a hbel to charge any man with 
those doctrines which are so useful to you individually, and 
of which you boast ; or, you think the opinions just, and yet 



98 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL o'CONNELL. 

that it is criminal to charge a iQan with tliose just opinions. 
For the sake, therefore, of consistency, and as an approval 
of your own opinions, I caU on you for a verdict of acquittal. 

I need not detain you long on the expression " intemper- 
ate ;" it does not mean any charge of excess of indulgence in 
any enjoyment ; it is not, as the Attorney-General suggested, 
an accusation of indulging beyond due bounds in the pleasures 
of the table, or of the bottle ; it does not allude, as the Attor- 
ney-General says, to midnight orgies, or to morning revels. I 
admit — I freely admit — that an allusion of that kind would 
savor of hbel, as it would certainly be unnecessary for any 
purpose of pohtical discussion. But the intemperance here 
spoken of is mere pohtical intemperance ; it is that vio- 
lence which every man of a fervid disposition feels in support 
of his political opinions. Nay, the more pure and honest any 
man may be in the adoption of his opinions, the more hkely, 
and the more justifiable will he be in that ardent support of 
them, which goes by the name of intemperance. 

In short, although pohtical intemperance cannot be deemed 
by cold calculators as a virtue, yet it has its source in the 
purest virtues of the human heart, and it frequently produces 
the greatest advantages to the public. How would it be pos- 
sible to overcome the many obstacles which seK-interest, and 
ignorance, and passion throw in the way of improvement, with- 
out some of that ardor of temper and disposition which grave 
men call intemperance? And, gentlemen, are not your opinions 
as deserving of warm suppqrt as the opinion of other men ; 
or do you feel any inherent depravity in the pohtical senti- 
ments which the Duke of Eichmond has adopted from you, 
that would render him depraved or degraded by any violence 
in their support ? You have no alternative. If you convict 
my chent, you condemn, upon your oaths, your own pohtical 
creed ; and declare it to be a hbel to charge any man with 
energy m your cause. 

If you are not disposed to go this length of pohtical incon- 
sistency, and if you have determined to avoid the religious 
inconsistency of perjm-ing yourselves for the good and glory 
of the Protestant religion, do, I pray you, examine the rest 
of this paragraph, and see whether you can, by any ingc- 



SPEECH IN DEFENCE OP JOHN MAGEE. 99 

nuity, detect that nondescript, a libel, in it. It states in sub- 
stance this : that this administration, treading in the steps of 
former administrations, preached to the confidence of the peo- 
ple, and played on their credulity; and that it will end, as 
those administrations have done, in some flattering prophecy, 
paying present disappointment with the coinage of delusive 
hope. That this administration commenced, as usual, with 
preaching to the confidence of the people, was neither crimi- 
nal in the fact, nor can it be unpleasant in the recital. 

It is the immemorial usage of all administrations and of all 
stations, to commence with those civil professions of future 
excellence of conduct which are called, and not unaptly, 
"preaching to the confidence of the people." The very 
actors are generally sincere at this stage of the pohtical 
farce ; and it is not insinuated that this administration was 
not as candid on this subject as the best of its predecessors. 
The playing on the credulity of the people is the ordinary 
state trick. You recollect how angry many of you were with 
his Grace for his Munster tour, shortly after his arrival here. 
You recollect how he checked the Mayor of Cork for propos- 
ing the new favorite Orange toast; what Hberality he dis- 
played to Popish traders and bankers in Limerick; and 
how he returned to the capital, leaving behind him the im- 
pression that the no-Popery men had been mistaken in their 
choice, and that the Duke of Bichmond was the enemy of 
every bigotry — the friend to every liberahty! Was he sin- 
cere, gentlemen of the jury, or was this one of those innocent 
devices which are called — ^playing on the people's credulity? 
Was he sincere ? Ask Ms subsequent conduct. Have there 
been since that time any other or different toasts cheered in 
his presence? Has the name of Ireland and of Irishmen 
been profaned by becoming the sport of the warmth excited 
by the accompaniment to these toasts ? Some individuals of 
you could inform me. I see another dignitary of your cor- 
poration here [said Mr. O'Connell, turning round pointedly to 
the lord mayor] — I see a civic dignitary here, who could tell 
of the toasts of these days or nights, and would not be at a 
loss to apply the right name — ^if he were not too prudent as 
well as too polite to do so — to that innocent affectation of hb- 



100 SELECT SPEECHES OP DANIEL o'CONNELL. 

erality which distinguished his Grace's visit to the south of 
Ireland. It was, indeed, a play upon our creduhty, but it can 
be no libel to speak of it as such ; for see the situation in 
which you would place his Grace ; you know he affected con- 
ciliation and perfect neutrality between our parties at first ; you 
know he has since taken a marked and decided part with you. 

Surely you are not disposed to call this a crime, as it were, 
to convict his Grace of duphcity, and of a vile hypocrisy. No, 
gentlemen, I entreat of you not to calumniate the Duke ; call 
this conduct a mere play on the creduhty of a people easily 
deceived — innocent in its intention, and equally void of guilt 
in its description. Do not attach to those words a meaning 
which would prove that you yourselves condemned, not so 
much the writer of them, as the man who gave color and coun- 
tenance to this assertion. Besides, gentlemen, what is your 
liberty of the press worth, if it be worthy of a dungeon to 
assert that the public credulity has been played upon ? The 
liberty of the press would be less than a dream, a shadow, if 
every such phrase be a hbel. 

But the Attorney-General triumphantly tells you that there 
must be a libel in this paragraph, because it ends with a 
charge of falsehood. May I ask you to take the entire para- 
graph together ? Common sense and your duty require you 
to do so. You will then perceive that this charge of falsehood 
is no more than an opinion, that the administration of the 
Duke of Eichmond will terminate precisely as that of many of 
his predecessors has done, bj an excuse for the past — a flat- 
tering and fallacious promise for the future. "Why, you must 
all of you have seen, a short time since, an account of a pub- 
he dinner in London, given by persons styling themselves 
" Friends to Eehgious Liberty." At that dinner, at which 
two of the Eoyal Dukes attended, there were, I think, no less 
than four or five noblemen who had filled the office of lord 
heutenant of Ireland. Gentlemen, at this dinner, they were 
ardent in their professions of kindness towards the Catholics 
of Ireland, in their declarations of the obvious policy and jus- 
tice of conciliation and concession, and they bore ample testi- 
mony to our sufferings and our merits. But I appeal from 
their present declarations to their past conduct ; they are now 



SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF JOHN MAGEE. 101 

full of liberality and justice to us ; yet, I speak only the truth 
of history, when I say that, during their government of this 
country, no practical benefits resulted from all this wisdom 
and kindness of sentiment ; with the single exception of Lord 
FitzwilUam, not one of them even attempted to do any good 
to the Catholics, or to Ireland. 

What did the Duke of Bedford do for us ? Just nothing. 
Some civihty, indeed, in words — some playing on public 
creduhty — but in act and deed, nothing at all. What did 
Lord Hardwicke do for us ? Oh, nothing, or rather less than 
nothing ; his administration here was, in that respect, a kind 
of negative quality ; it was cold, harsh, and forbidding to the 
CathoHcs ; lenient, mild, and encouraging to the Orange fac- 
tion ; the public mind lay in the first torpor caused by the 
mighty fall of the Union, and whilst we lay entranced in the 
oblivious pool. Lord Hardwicke's administration proceeded 
without a trace of that justice and Uberality which it appears 
he must have thought unbefitting the season of his govern- 
ment, and which, if he then entertained, he certainly con- 
cealed ; he ended, however, with giving us flattering hopes for 
the future. The Duke of Bedford was more expUcit ; he 
promised in direct terms, and drew upon the future exertions 
of an hereditary prince, to compensate us for present disap- 
pointment. And will any man assert that the Duke of Eich- 
mond is libelled by a comparison with Lord Hardwicke ; that 
he is traduced when he is compared with the Duke of Bed- 
ford ? If the words actually were these : " The Duke of Rich- 
mond wiU terminate his administration exactly as Lord Hard- 
wicke and the Duke of Bedford terminated their administra- 
tions ;" if those were the words, none of you could possibly 
vote for a conviction, and yet the meaning is precisely the 
same. No more is expressed by the language of my client ; 
and, if the meaning be thus clearly innOcent, it would be 
strange, indeed, to call on you for a verdict of conviction upon 
no more solid ground than this, that whilst the signification 
was the same, the words were different. And thus, again, does 
the prosecutor require of you to separate the sense from the 
sound, and to convict for the sound, against the sense of the 



102 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

In plain truth, gentlemen, if there be a harshness in the 
sound, there is none in the words. The writer describes, and 
means to describe, the ordinary termination of every adminis- 
tration repa}Tiig in promise the defaults of performance. And, 
when he speaks of falsehood, he prophecies merely as to the 
probable or at least possible conclusion of the present govern- 
ment. He does not impute to any precedent assertion, false- 
hood ; but he does predict, that the concluding promise of this, 
as of other administrations, depending as those promises always 
do upon other persons for performance, wiU remain as former 
promises have remained — unfulfilled and unperformed. And 
is this prophecy — this prediction a crime? Is it a libel to 
prophecy? See what topics this sage venerator of the hberty 
of the press, the Attorney-General, would fain prohibit ? First, 
he teUs you, that the crimes of the predecessors of the Duke 
must not be mentioned — and thus he forbids the history of 
past events. Secondly, he informs you, that no allusion is to 
be made to the errors, follies, or even the striking features 
of the present governors ; and thus he forbids the detail of 
the occurrences of the present day. And, thirdly, he declares 
that no conjectm^e shall be made upon what is likely to occur 
hereafter ; and thus he forbids all attempts to anticipate future 
acts. 

It comes simply to this ; he talks of venerating the hberties 
of the press, and yet he restrains that press from discussing 
past history, present story, and future probabilities ; he pro- 
hibits the past, the present, and the future ; ancient records, 
modem truth, and prophecy, are all within the capacious 
range of his punishments. Is there anything else ? Would 
this venerator of the liberty of the press go further ? Yes, 
gentlemen, having forbidden all matter of history past and 
present, and aU prediction of the future, he generously throws 
in abstract principles, and, as he has told you, that his prisons 
shall contain every person who speaks of what was, or what is, 
or what will be, he hkewise consigned to the same fate every 
person who treats of the theory or principles of government ; 
and yet he dares to talk of the liberty of the press ! Can you 
be his dupes ? WiU you be his victims ? Where is the con- 
science — where is the indignant spirit of insulted reason 



SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF JOHN MAGEE. 103 

amongst you ? Has party feeling extinguished in your breasts 
every glow of virtue — every spark of manhood ? 

If there be any warmth about you — if you are not clay- cold 
to aU but party feeling, I would, with the air and in the tone 
of triumph, call you to the consideration of the remaining 
paragraph which has been spread on the lengthened indict- 
ment before you. I divide it into two branches, and shall do 
no more with the one than to repeat it. I have read it for 
you aheady ; I must read it again : 

" Had lie remained what lie first came over, or wliat he afterwards 
professed to be, he would have retained his reputation for honest, open 
hostihty, defending his political principles with firmness, perhaps with 
warmth, but without rancor ; the supporter and not the tool of an ad- 
ministration ; a mistaken poHtician, perhaps, but an honorable man, and 
a respectable soldier. " 

Would to God I had to address another jury ! "Would to 
God I had reason and judgment to address, and I could en- 
tertain no apprehension from passion or prejudice ! Here 
should I then take my stand, and require of that unprejudiced 
jury, whether this sentence does not demonstrate the complete 
absence of private malice or personal hostihty. Does not this 
sentence prove a kindly disposition towards the individual, 
mixing and minghng with that discussion which freedom sanc- 
tions and requires, respecting his political conduct ? Contrast 
this sentence with the prosecutor's accusation of private malig- 
nity, and decide between Mr. Magee and his calumniators. 
He, at least, has this advantage, that your verdict cannot alter 
the nature of things ; and that the public must see and feel 
this truth, that the present prosecution is directed against the 
discussion of the conduct towards the public, of men confided 
with public authority ; that this is a direct attack upon the 
right to caU the attention of the people to the management of 
the people's affairs, and that, by your verdict of conviction, it 
is intended to leave no peaceful or unawed mode of redress for 
the wrongs and sufferings of the people. 

But I will not detain you on these obvious topics. We 
draw to a close, and I hurry to it. This sentence is said to 
be particularly libellous : 



104 SELECT SPEECHES OF DAXIEL O'CONNELL. 

"His party would have been i)roud of him ; his friends would have 
praised (they need not have flattered him), and his enemies, though they 
might have regretted, must have respected his conduct ; from the worst 
quarter there would have been some small tribute of praise ; from none 
any great portion of censure ; and his administration, though not popu- 
lar, would have been conducted with dignity, and without offence. 
This line of conduct he has taken care to avoid : his original character 
for moderation he has forfeited ; he can lay no claims to any merits for 
neutrality, nor does he even deserve the cheerless credit of defensive 
operations. He has begun to act ; he has ceased to be a dispassionate 
chief governor, who views the wickedness and the folly of faction with 
composui'e and forbearance, and stands, the representative of majesty, 
aloof from the contest. He descends ; he mixes with the throng ; he 
becomes personally engaged, and, having lost his temper, calls forth his 
private passions to support his public principles ; he is no longer an 
indifferent viceroy, but a frightful partisan of an English ministry, 
whose base jDassions he indulges — ^whose unworthy resentments he grati- 
fies, and on whose behalf he at present canvasses." 

Well, gentlemen, and did lie not canvass on belialf of the 
ministry? "Was there a titled or untitled servant of the Cas- 
tle who was not despatched to the south to vote against the 
popular, and for the ministerial candidates? Was there a 
single individual within the reach of his Grace that did not 
vote against Prittie and Matthew, in Tipperary, and against 
Hutchinson, in Cork ? I have brought mth me some of the 
newspapers of the day, in which this partisanship in the Lord 
Lieutenant is treated by Mr. Hutchinson in language so strong 
and so pointed, that the words of this pubhcation are mUdness 
and softness itself, when compared -with that language. I shall 
not read them for you, because I should fear that you may 
imagine I unnecessarily identified my chent with the violent 
but the merited reprobation poured upon the scandalous inter- 
ference of our government with those elections. 

I need not, I am sure, tell you that any interference by the 
Lord Lieutenant with the purity of the election of members 
to serve in Parhament, is highly unconstitutional, and highly 
criminal ; he is doubly bound to the most strict neutrahty ; 
first, as a peer, the law prohibits his interference ; secondly, 
as a representative of the crown, his interference in elections 
is an usurpation of the people's rights ; it is, in substance and 
effect, high treason against the people, and its miscMefs are 



SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF JOHN MAGEE. 105 

not tlie less by reason of tliere being no punishment affixed by 
the law to this treason. 

If this offence, gentlemen, be of daily occurrence^ — if it be 
frequently committed, it is upon that account only the more 
destructive to our liberties, and, therefore, requires the more 
loud, direct, and frequent condemnation : indeed, if such 
practices be permitted to prevail, there is an end of every 
remnant of freedom ; our boasted constitution becomes a 
mockery and an object of ridicule, and we ought to desire the 
manly simplicity of unmixed despotism. Will the Attorney- 
General — will his colleague, the Solicitor- General, deny that I 
have described this offence in its true colors? "Will they 
attempt to deny the interference of the Duke of Richmond in 
the late elections ? I would almost venture to put your ver- 
dict upon this, and to consent to a conviction, if any person 
shall be found so stocked with audacity, as to presume pub- 
Hcly to deny the interference of his Grace in the late elec- 
tions, and his partisanship in favor of the ministerial candi- 
dates. Gentlemen, if that be denied, what will you, what can 
you think of the veracity of the man who denies it ? I fear- 
lessly refer the fact to you ; on that fact I build. This inter- 
ference is as notorious as the sun at noonday ; and who shall 
venture to deny that such interference is described by a soft 
term when it is caUed partisanship? He who uses the 
influence of the executive to control the choice of the repre- 
sentatives of the people, violates the first principles of the 
constitution, is guilty of political sacrilege, and profanes the 
very sanctuary of the people's rights and liberties ; and if he 
should not be called a partisan, it is only because some 
harsher and more appropriate term ought to be apphed to his 
dehnquency. 

I win recall to your minds an instance of violation of the 
constitution, which will illustrate the situation of my client, 
and the protection which, for your own sakes, you owe him. 
When, in 1687, King James removed several Protestant rec- 
tors in Ireland from their churches, against law and justice, 
and illegally and unconstitutionally placed Roman Catholic 
clergymen in their stead, would any of you be content that he 
should be simply called a partisan ! No, gentlemen, my client 



106 SELECT SPEECHES OP DANIEL o'CONNELL. 

and I — Catholic and Protestant though we be — agree per- 
fectly in this, that j^artisan would have been too mild a name 
for him, and that he should have been branded as a Adolator 
of law, as an enemy to the constitution, and as a crafty tyrant 
who sought to gratify the prejudices of one part of his sub- 
jects that he might trample upon the liberties of all. And 
what, I would fain learn, could you think of the Attorney- 
General who prosecuted, or of the judge who condemned, or 
of the jury who convicted a printer for publishing to the 
world this tyranny — this gross violation of law and justice ? 
But how would your indignation be roused, if James had 
been only called a partisan, and for calling him a partisan a 
Popish jury had been packed, a Popish judge had been select- 
ed, and that the printer, who, you wiU admit, deserved ap- 
plause and reward, met condemnation and punishment. 

Of you — of you, shall this story be told, if you convict Mr. 
Magee. The Duke has interfered in elections ; he has violat- 
ed the hberties of the subject ; he has profaned the very tem- 
ple of the constitution ; and he, who has said that in so do- 
ing, he was a partisan, from your hands expects punishment. 

. Compare the kindred offences ; James deprived the Protes- 
tant rectors of their livings ; he did not persecute, nor did he 
interfere with their reHgion ; for tithes, and oblations, and 
glebes, and church lands, though sohd appendages to any 
church, are no part of the Protestant religion. The Protes- 
tant religion would, I presume — and for the honor of human 
nature I sincerely hope — continue its influence over the hu- 
man mind without the aid of those extrinsic advantages. Its 
pastors would, I trust and beheve, have remained true to their 
charge, without the adventitious benefits of temporal rewards ; 
and, like the Boman Catholic Church, it might have shone 
forth a glorious example of firmness in rehgion, setting perse- 
cution at defiance. James did not attack the Protestant reh- 
gion ; I repeat it ; he only attacked the revenues of the Pro- 
testant church ; he violated the law and the constitution, in 
depriving men of that property, by his individual authority, 
to which they had precisely the same right with that by which 
he wore his crown. But is not the controlhng the election of 
members of parHament a more dangerous violation of the con- 



SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF JOHN MAGEE. 107 

stitution ? Does it not corrupt the very sources of legislation, 
and convert the guardians of the state into its plunderers ? 
The one was a direct and undisguised crime, capable of being 
redressed in the ordinary course of the law, and producing 
resistance by its open and plain violation of right and of law ; 
the other disguises itself in so many shapes, is patronized by 
so, many high examples, and is followed by such perfect secu- 
rity, that it becomes the first duty of every man who possesses 
any reverence for the constitution, or any attachment to lib- 
erty, to lend all his efforts to detect, and, if possible, to pun- 
ish it. 

To any man who loved the constitution or freedom, I could 
safely appeal for my client's vindication ; or if any displeasure 
could be excited in the mind of such a man, it would arise be- 
cause of the forbearance and lenity of this publication. But 
the Duke is called a frightful partisan. Granted, gentlemen, 
granted. And is not the interference I have mentioned fright- 
ful ? Is it not terrific ? Who can contemplate it without shud- 
dering at the consequences which it is likely to produce ? What 
gentler phrase — what lady-like expression should my chent 
use? The constitution is sought to be violated, and he calls 
the author of that violation a frightful partisan. Really, gen- 
tlemen, the fastidiousness which would reject this expression 
would be better employed in preventing or punishing crime, 
than in dragging to a dungeon the man who has the manliness 
to adhere to truth, and to use it. EecoUect also — I cannot re- 
peat it too often — ^that the Attorney-General told you, that 
" the liberty of the press was the best protection of the peo- 
ple against the government." Now, if the constitution be vio- 
lated — if the purity of election be disturbed by the executive, 
is not this precisely the case when this protection becomes 
necessary ? It is not wanted, nor can the press be called a 
protector, so long as the government is administered with 
fidelity, care, and skiU. The protection of the press is requi- 
site only when integrity, diligence, or Judgment do not belong 
to the administration ; and that protection becomes the more 
necessary in the exact proportion in which these quahties are 
deficient. But, what protection can it afford if you convict in 
this instance ? For, by doing so, you will decide that nothing 



108 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL o'CONNELL. 

ought to be said against that want of honesty, or of attention, 
or of understanding ; the more necessary will the protection of 
the press become, the more unsafe will it be to pubhsh the 
truth ; and in the exact proportion in which the press might 
be useful, will it become Hable to punishment. In short, ac- 
cording to the Attorney- General's doctrine, when the press is 
" best employed and wanted most," it will be most dangerous 
to use it. And thus, the more corrupt and profligate any ad- 
ministration may be, the more clearly can the public prose- 
cutor ascertain the sacrifice of his selected victim. And call 
you this protection? Is this a protector who must be dis- 
armed the moment danger threatens, and is bound a prisoner 
the instant the fight has commenced ? 

Here I should close the case — here I should shortly recapi- 
tulate my client's defence, and leave him to your considera- 
tion ; but I have been already too tedious, and shall do no 
more than recall to your recollection the purity, the integrity, 
the entire disinterestedness of Mr. Magee's motives. If money 
were his object, he could easily procure himself to be patron- 
ized and salaried ; but he prefers to be persecuted and dis- 
countenanced by the great and powerful, because they cannot 
dex3rive him of the certain expectation, that his exertions are 
useful to his long-suffering, ill-requited country. 

He is disinterested, gentlemen ; he is honest ; the Attorney- 
General admitted it, and actually took the trouble of adminis- 
tering to him advice how to amend his fortune, and save his 
person. But the advice only made his youthful blood mantle 
in that ingenuous countenance, and his reply was painted in 
the indignant look, that told the Attorney-General he might 
offer wealth, but he could not bribe — that he might torture, 
but he could not terrify ! Yes, gentlemen, firm in his honesty, 
and strong in the fervor of his love of Ireland, he fearlessly 
awaits your verdict, convinced that even you must respect the 
man whom you are called upon to condemn. Look to it, gen- 
tlemen ; consider whether an honest, disinterested man shall 
be prohibited from discussing public affairs ; consider whether 
all but flattery is to be silent — whether the discussion of the 
errors and the capacities of the ministers is to be closed for- 
ever. "Whether we are to be silent as to the crimes of former 



SPEECH m DEFENCE OF JOHN MAGEE. 109 

periods — ^the follies of the present, and the credulity of the 
future ; and, above all, reflect upon the demand that is made 
on you to punish the canvassing of abstract principles. 

Has the Attorney- General succeeded ? Has he procured a 
jury so fitted to his object, as to be ready to bury in oblivion 
every fault and every crime, every error and every imperfection 
of pubhc men, past, present, and future — and who shall, in ad- 
dition, silence any dissertation on the theory or principle of 
legislation ? Do, gentlemen, go this length with the prosecutor, 
and then venture on your oaths. I charge you to venture to 
talk to your famihes of the venerable hberty of the press — 
the protection of the people against the vices of the gov- 
ernment. 

I should conclude, but the Attorney-General compels me to 
follow him through another subject ; he has told you, and told 
you truly, that besides the matter set out in the indictment — 
the entire of which, gentlemen, we have already gone through — 
this publication contains severe strictures upon the alleged in- 
delicacy in the Chief Justice issuing a ministerial warrant, in 
a case which was afterwards to come before him judicially, 
and upon the manner in which the jury was attempted to be 
put together in Doctor Sheridan's case, and in which a jury 
was better arranged in the case of Mr. Kirwan. Indeed, the 
Attorney-General seemed much delighted with these topics ; 
he again burst out into an enraptured encomium upon himself ; 
and, as it were inspired by his subject, he rose to the dignity 
of a classical quotation, when he exclaimed : " Me, me, adsum, 
qui feci." He forgot to add the still more appropriate remain- 
der of the sentence, " mea fraus omnis !' 

"Yes, gentlemen, he has avowed with more manliness than 
discretion, that he was the contriver of all those measures. 
With respect to the warrant which his lordship issued in the 
stead of the ordinary justices of the peace, and upon a charge 
not amounting to any breach of the peace, I shall say nothing 
at present. An obvious delicacy restrains me from entering up- 
on that subject ; and as the interest of my client does not coun- 
teract that delicacy, I shall refrain. But I would not have it 
understood that I have formed no opinion on the subject. 
Yes, I have formed an opinion, and a strong and decided 



110 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL o'CONNELL. 

opinion, whicli I am ready to support as a lawyer and a man, 
but the expression of wliicli I now sacrifice to a plain delicacy. 
But I must say, that tlie Attorney-General has thrown new 
light on this business ; he has given us information we did not 
possess before. I did not before know that the warrant was 
sought for and procured by the Attorney-General ; I thought 
it was the spontaneous act of his lordship, and not in conse- 
quence of any private solicitation from the Attorney-General. 
In this respect, he has set me right — it is a fact of considera- 
ble value, and although the consequences to be deduced from 
it are not pleasing to any man, loving, as I do, the purity of 
justice, yet, I most heartily thank the Attorney-General for 
the fact — the important fact. 

His second avowal relates to Dr. Sheridan. It really is 
comfortable to know how much of the indecent scene exhib- 
ited upon his trial belonged to the Attorney- General. He 
candidly tells us, that the obtrusion of the pohce magistrate, 
Sirr, as an assistant to the Crown-Solicitor, was the act of 
the king's Attorney-General, "Adsum qui feci," said he. 
Thus he avows that he procured an Orangeman — I do not ex- 
actly understand what is meant by an Orangeman — some of 
you could easily tell me — that he caused this Orangeman to 
stand in open court, next to the Solicitor for the Crown, with 
his written paper, suggesting who Avere fit jm'ors for his pur- 
pose, and who should be put by. Gentlemen, he avows that 
this profligate scene was acted in the open court, by his direc- 
tions. It was by the Attorney-General's special directions, 
then, that such men as John Lindsay, of Sackville street, and 
John Eoche, of Strand street, were set aside ; the latter, be- 
cause, though amongst the most wealthy and respectable mer- 
chants in your city, he is a Papist ; and the other, because, 
although a Protestant, he is tainted with Hberahty — the only 
offence, pubhc or private, that could be attributed to him. 
Yes, such men as these were set aside by the Attorney-Gene- 
ral's aid-de-camp, the salaried justice of the police office. 

The next avowal is also precious. This pubhcatiou contains 
also a commentary on the Castle-list jury that convicted Mr. 
Kirwan, and the Attorney-General has also avowed his share 
in that transaction ; he thus supphes the only fink we wanted 



SPEECH m DEFENCE OP JOHN MAGEE. Ill 

in our chain of eyidence, when we challenged the array upon 
that trial. If we could have proved that which the Attorney- 
General with his " adsum qui feci," yesterday admitted, we 
should have succeeded and got rid of that panel. Even now, 
it is deHghtful to understand the entire machinery, and one 
now sees at once the reason why Sir Charles Saxton was not 
examined on the part of the crown, in reply to the case we 
made. He would, you now plainly see, have traced the ar- 
rangement to the Attorney-General, and the array must have 
been quashed. Thus in the boasting humor of this Attorney- 
General, he has brought home to himself personally, that 
which we attributed to him only in his official capacity, and 
lie has convicted the man of that which we charged only upon 
the office. 

He has, he must have a motive for this avowal ; if he had 
not an adequate object in view, he would not have thus un- 
necessarily and wantonly taken upon himself all the reproach 
of those transactions. He would not have boasted of having, 
out of court, sohcited an extra-judicial opinion, in the form of 
a warrant from his lordship; he would not have gloried in 
employing an Orangeman from the pohce office to assist him 
in open court, with instructions in writing how to pack his 
jury ; still less would he have suffered it to be beheved that he 
was a party at the Castle, with the Acting Secretary of State, 
to the arrangement of the jury that was afterwards to try a 
person prosecuted by the state. 

He would not have made this, I must say, disgraceful avowal, 
unless he were influenced by an adequate motive. I can easily 
teU you what that motive was. He knew your prejudices — he 
knew your antipathy — alas ! your interested antipathy — to the 
Cathohcs, and, therefore, in order to induce you to convict a 
Protestant of a hbel for a pubhcation, innocent, if not useful 
in itself, in order to procure that conviction from your party 
feelings and your prejudices, which he despahed of obtaining 
from your judgments, he vaunts himseK to you as the mighty 
destroyer of the hopes of Popish petitioners — as a man capa- 
ble of every act within, as without the profession, to prevent or 
impede any rehef to the Papists. In short, he wishes to show 
himself to you as an active partisan at your side ; and upon 



112 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL o'COKNELL. 

tliose merits he who knows you best, claims your verdict — a 
verdict wliich must be given in on your oaths, and attested by 
and in the name of the God of all Christians. 

For my part I fi-ankly avow that I shudder at these scenes ; 
I cannot, without horror, view this interfering and intermed- 
dhng with judges and juries, and my abhorrence must be aug- 
mented, when I find it avowed, that the actors in all these sad 
exhibitions were the mere puppets of the Attorney-General, 
moved by his wires, and performing under his control. It is 
in vain to look for safety to person or property, whilst this 
system is allowed to pervade our courts ; the very fountain of 
justice may be corrupted at its source, and those waters which 
should confer health and vigor throughout the land, can then 
diffuse nought but mephitic and pestilential vapors to disgust 
and to destroy. If honesty, if justice be silent, yet prudence 
ought to check these practices. We Hve in a new era — a mel- 
ancholy era, in which perfidy and profligacy are sanctioned by 
high authority ; the base violation of j)lighted faith, the deep 
stain of dishonor, infidehty in love, treachery in friendship, the 
abandonment of every principle, and the adoption of every 
frivolity and of every vice that can excite hatred combined 
with ridicule — all — all this, and more, may be seen around us ; 
and yet it is beheved, it is expected, that this system is fated 
to be eternal. Gentlemen, we shall all weep the insane delu- 
sion ; and in the terrific moments of altercation you know not, 
yon cannot know, how soon or how bitterly the ingredients 
of your own poisoned chahce may be commended to your own 
hps. 

"With these views around us — with these horrible prospects 
lying obscurely before us — in sadness and in sorrow, party 
feeHngs may find a sohtary consolation. My heart feels a 
species of relief when I recollect that not one single Eoman 
CathoUc has been found suited to the Attorney- General's pur- 
pose. With what an affectation of hberality would he have 
placed, at least, one Koman Cathohc on his juries, if he 
could have found one Eoman Catholic gentleman in this city 
capable of being managed into fitness for those juries. You 
well know that the very first merchants of this city, in wealth 
as well as in character, are Catholics. Some of you serve oc- 



SPEECH IN DEFENCE OP JOHN MAGEE. 113 

casionally on special juries in important cases of private prop- 
erty. Have you ever seen one of those special juries without 
many Catholics? — frequently a majority — seldom less than 
one-half of Catholics. Why are CathoHcs excluded from these 
state juries ? Who shall venture to avow the reason ? Oh, 
for the partisan indiscretion that would blindly avow the rea- 
son ! It is, in truth, a high compHment, which persecution, in 
spite of itself, pays to independent integrity. 

It is, in fact, a compHment. It is intended for a reproach, 
for a libel. It is meant to insinuate that such a man, for ex- 
ample, as KandaU. M'DonneU^ — the pride and boast of com- 
merce — one of the first contributors to the revenues of the 
state, and the first in all the sweet charities of social hfe — 
would refuse to do justice, upon his oath, to the crown, and 
perjure himself in a state trial, because he is a Eoman Catho- 
lic. You, even you, would be shocked, if any man were so 
audacious as to assert, in words, so foul a libel, so false a cal- 
umny ; and yet what does the conduct of the Attorney-Gene- 
ral amount to ? Why, practically, to just such a libel, to pre- 
cisely such a calumny. He acts a part which he would not 
venture to speak, and endeavors silently to inflict a censure 
which no man could be found so devoid of shame as to assert 
in words. And here, gentlemen, is a Hbel for which there is 
no punishment ; here is a profligate calumny for which the law 
furnishes no redress ; he can continue to calumniate us by his 
rejection. See whether he does not ojBfer you a greater insult 
by his selection ; lay your hands to your hearts, and in pri- 
vate communion with yourselves, ask the reason why you 
have been sought for and selected for this jury^ — will you 
discover that you have been selected because of admitted 
impartiahty? 

Would to God you could make that discovery ! It would 
be one on which my chent might build the certain expecta- 
tion of a triumphal acquittal. 

Let me transport you from the heat and fury of domestic poli- 
tics ; let me place you in a foreign land ; you are Protestants ; 
with your good leave, you shaU for a moment be Portuguese, 
and Portuguese is now an honorable name, for right well have 
the people of Portugal fought for their country, against the 



114 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

foreign invader. Oh, liow easy to procui-e a similar spirit, and 
more of bravery, amongst the people of Ireland ! The slight 
purchase of good words, and a kindly dis^Dosition, would con- 
vert them into an impenetrable guard for the safety of the 
Throne and the State. But ad"sdce and regret are equally 
imavailing, and they are doomed to calumny and oppression, 
the reahty of persecution, and the mockery of justice, until 
some fatal hour shall arrive, which may preach wisdom to the 
dupes, and menace with punishment the oppressor. 

In the meantime I must place you in Portugal. Let us 
suppose for an instant that the Protestant religion is that of 
the people of Portugal^the Cathohc that of the government 
— that the house of Braganza has not reigned, but that Por- 
tugal is still governed by the viceroy of a foreign nation, from 
whom no kindness, no favor has ever flowed, and from whom 
justice has rarely been obtained, and upon those unfrequent 
occasions, not conceded generously, but extorted by force, or 
wrung from distress by terror and apprehension, in a stinted 
measure and ungracious manner ; you, Protestants, shall form, 
not, as with us in Ireland, nine tenths, but some lesser num- 
ber — ^you shall be only four fifths of the population ; and aU the 
persecution which you have yourselves practiced here upon Pa- 
pists, whilst you, at the same time, accused the Papists of the 
crime of being persecutors, shall glow around ; your native 
land shall be to you the country of strangers ; you shall be 
ahens in the soil that gave you bu-th, and whilst every for- 
eigner may, in the land of your forefathers, attain rank, sta- 
tion, emolument, honors, you alone shall be excluded ; and 
you shall be excluded for no other reason but a conscientious 
abhorrence to the rehgion of your ancestors. 

Only think, gentlemen, of the scandalous injustice of pun- 
ishing you because you are Protestants ! With what scorn, 
with what contempt do you not hsten to the stale pretences — 
to the miserable excuses by which, under the name of state 
reasons and poHtical arguments, your exclusion and de- 
gradation are sought to be justified. Your reply is ready : 
" Perform your iniquity — men of crimes (you exclaim) be un- 
just—punish us for our fidehty and honest adherence to truth, 
but insult us not by supposing that your reasoning can impose 



SPEECH IN DEFENCE OP JOHN MAGEE. 115 

upon a single individual either of us or of yourselves." In 
tliis situation let me give you a viceroy ; he shall be a man 
who may be styled — by some persons disposed to exaggerate, 
beyond bounds, his merits, and to flatter him more than 
enough — " an honorable man and a respectable soldier," but 
in point of fact, he shall be of that httle-minded class of beings 
who are suited to be the plaything of knaves — one of those 
men who imagine they govern a nation, whilst in reality they 
are but the instruments upon which the crafty play with safety 
and with profit. Take such a man for your viceroy — Protes- 
tant Portuguese. We shall begin with making this tour from 
Tralos Montes to the kingdom of Algesiras — as one amongst 
us should say, from the Giant's Causeway to the kingdom of 
Kerry. Upon his tour he shall affect great candor and good 
will to the poor suffering Protestants. The bloody anniver- 
saries of the inquisitorial triumphs of former days shall be for 
a season abandoned, and over our inherent hostility the garb 
of hypocrisy shall for a season be thrown. Enmity to the 
Protestants shall become, for a moment, less apparent ; but it 
will be only the more odious for the transitory disguise. 

The delusion of the hour having served its purpose, your 
viceroy shows himself in his native colors ; he selects for 
office, and prefers for his pension-hst, the men miserable in 
intellect, if they be but virulent against the Protestants ; to 
rail against the Protestant rehgiOn — to turn its hohest rites 
into ridicule — to slander the individual Protestants, are the 
sm^est, the only means to obtain his favor and patronage. He 
selects from his Popish bigots some being more canine than 
human, who, not having talents to sell, brings to the market 
of bigotry his impudence— who, with no quahty under heaven 
but gross, vulgar, acrimonious, disgustful and shameless abuse 
of Protestantism to recommend him, shall be promoted to 
some accountant-generalship, and shall riot in the spoils of 
the people he traduces, as it were to crown with insult the 
severest injuries. This viceroy selects for his favorite privy 
councillor some learned doctor, half lawyer, haK divine, an 
entire brute, distinguished by the unblushing repetition of 
calumnies against the Protestants. This man has asserted 
that Protestants are perjurers and murderers in principle — 



116 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

that they keep no faith with Papists, but hold it lawful and 
meiitoiious to violate every engagement, and commit every 
atrocity towards any person who happens to differ with Pro- 
testants in rehgious behef. This man raves thus, in public, 
against the Protestants, and has turned his ravings into large 
personal emoluments. But whilst he is the oracle of minor 
bigots, he does not beheve himself ; he has selected for the 
partner of his tenderest joys, of his most ecstatic moments- 
he has chosen for the intended mother of his children, for the 
sweetener and solace of his every care, a Protestant, gentle- 
men of the jury. 

Next to the vile instruments of bigotry, his accountant-gen- 
eral and privy councillor, we will place his acts. The Protes- 
tants of Portugal shall be exposed to insult and slaughter ; an 
Orange party — a party of Popish Orangemen, shall be sup- 
posed to exist; they shall have Hberty to slaughter the un- 
armed and defenceless Protestants, as they sit peaceably 
at their firesides. They shall be let loose in some Portuguese 
district called Monaghan ; they shall cover the streets of 
some Portuguese town of Belfast with human gore ; and in 
the metropohs of Lisbon, the Protestant widow shall have 
her harmless child mrudered in the noonday, and his blood 
shall have flowed imrequited, because his assassin was very 
loyal when he was drunk, and had an irresistible propensity 
to signalize his loyalty by kilhng Protestants. Behold, gen- 
tlemen, this viceroy depriving of command, and staying the 
promotion of, every military man who shall dare to think Pro- 
testants men, or who shaU presume to suggest that they ought 
not to be prosecuted. Behold this viceroy promoting and 
rewarding the men who insulted and attempted to degrade 
the first of your Protestant nobihty. Behold him in public, 
the man I have described. 

In his personal concerns he receives an enormous revenue 
from the people he thus misgoverns. See in his management 
of that revenue a parsimony at which even his enemies blush. 
See the paltry sum of a single joe refused to any Protestant 
charity, whilst his bounty is unknown even at the Popish 
institutions for benevolent purposes. See the most wasteful 
expenditm^e of the public money — every job patronized — 



SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF JOHN MAGEE. 117 

every profligacy encouraged. See the resources of Portugal 
diminislied. See her discords and her internal feuds increased. 
And, lastly, behold the course of justice perverted and cor- 
rupted. 

It is thus, gentlemen, the Protestant Portuguese seek to 
obtain rehef by humble petition and supplication. There can 
be no crime surely for a Protestant oppressed, because he fol- 
lows a rehgion which is, in his opinion, true, to endeavor to 
obtain rehef by mildly representing to his Popish oppressors, 
that it is the right of every man to worship the Deity accord- 
ing to the dictates of his own conscience ; to state respect- 
fully to the governing powers that it is unjust, and may be 
highly impohtic to punish men, merely because they do not 
profess Popery, which they do not beheve; and to submit, 
with all humihty, that to lay the burdens of the state equally, 
and distribute its benefits partially, is not justice, but, 
although sanctioned by the pretence of religious zeal, is, in 
truth, iniquity, and palpably criminal. Well, gentlemen, for 
daring thus to remonstrate, the Protestants are persecuted. 
The first step in the persecution is to pervert the plain mean- 
ing of the Portuguese language, and a law prohibiting any 
disguise in apparel, shall be applied to the ordinary dress of 
the individual ; it reminds one of pretence and purpose. 

To carry on these persecutions, the viceroy chooses for his 
first inquisitor the descendant of some Popish refugee — some 
man with an hereditary hatred to Protestants ; he is not the 
son of an Irishman, this refugee inquisitor — no, for the fact is 
notorious, that the Irish refugee Papists were ever distin- 
guished for their hberahty, as well as for their gallantry in the 
field and talent in the cabinet. This inquisitor shall be, gen- 
tlemen, a descendant from one of those English Papists, who 
was the dupe or contriver of the Gunpowder Plot! With 
such a chief inquisitor, can you conceive anything more cal- 
culated to rouse you to agony than the solemn mockery .of 
your trial? This chief inquisitor begins by influencing the 
judges out of court ; he proceeds to inquire out fit men for his 
interior tribunal, which, for brevity, we will call a jury. He 
selects his juries from the most violent of the Popish 
Orangemen of the city, and procures a conviction against law 



118 SELECT SrEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

and common sense, and without evidence. Have you followed 
me, gentlemen ? Do you enter into tlie feelings of Protes- 
tants tlius insulted, thus oppressed, thus persecuted — their 
enemies and traducers promoted, and encom^aged, and richly 
rewarded — their friends discountenanced and displaced — their 
persons unprotected, and their characters assailed by hired 
calumniators — their blood shed with impunity — their revenues 
parsimoniously spared to accumulate for the individual, waste- 
fully squandered for the state — the emblems of discord, the 
war-cry of disunion, sanctioned by the highest authority, and 
Justice herself converted from an impartial arbitrator into a 
frightful partisan ? 

Yes, gentlemen, place you.rselves as Protestants under such 
a persecution. Behold before you this chief inquisitor, with 
his prejudiced tribunal — tliis gambler, with a loaded die ; and 
now say what are your feelings — what are your sensations of 
disgust, abhorrence, affright ? But if at such a moment some 
ardent and enthusiastic Papist, regardless of his interests, 
and roused by the crimes that were thus committed against 
you, should describe, in measured, and cautious, and cold lan- 
guage, scenes of oppression and iniquity — if he were to de- 
scribe them, not as I have done, but in feeble and mild lan- 
guage, and simply state the facts for your benefit and the 
instruction of the pubUc — if this hberal Papist, for this, were 
dragged to the Inquisition, as for a crime, and menaced with 
a dungeon for years, good and gTacious God ! how would you 
revolt and abominate the men who could consign him to that 
dungeon ! "With what an eye of contempt, and hatred, and 
despair, would you not look at the packed and profligate tri- 
bunal, which could direct punishment against him who de- 
seiwed rewards ! "What pity would you not feel for the advo- 
cate who, heavily and without hope, labored in his defence ! 
and with what agonized and frenzied des^^air would you not 
look to the future destinies of a land in which perjury was 
organized and from which humanity and justice had been for 
ever banished ! 

With this picture of yourselves in Portugal, come home to us 
in Ii'eland, say is that a crime, when applied to Protestants, 
which is a vu-tue and a merit when applied to Papists ? Be- 



SPEECH IN DEFENCE OP JOHN MAGEE. 119 

hold liow we suffer here ; and then reflect, that it is princi- 
pally by reason of your prejudices against us that the Attor- 
ney-General hopes for your verdict. The good man has talked 
of his impartiahty ; he will suppress, he says, the licentious- 
ness of the press. I have, I hope, shown you the right of my 
chent to discuss the pubhc su.bjects which he has discussed in 
the manner they are treated of in the pubHcation before you, 
yet he is prosecuted. Let me read for you a paragraph which 
the Attorney-General has not prosecuted — which he has re- 
fused to prosecute : 

Ball-tbat, July 4, 1813. 
" A meeting of the Orange Lodges was agreed on, in consequence of tlie 
manner in -wliicli the Catholics wished to have persecuted the loyaHsts in 
this county last year, when they even murdered some of them for no 
other reason than their being yeomen and Protestants." 

And, again — 

"It was at Ballybay that the Catholics murdered one Hughes, a yeo- 
man sergeant, for being a Protestant, as was given in evidence at the 
assizes by a Catholic witness." 

I have read this passage from the Hibernian Journal of the 
7th of this month. I know not whether you can hear, un- 
moved, a paragraph which makes my blood boil to read ; but 
I shall only tell you, that the Attorney-General refused to 
prosecute this hbeller. Gentlemen, there have been several 
murders committed in the County of Monaghan, in wliich Bal- 
lybay hes. The persons killed happened to be Roman Catho- 
lics ; their murderers are Orangemen. Several of the persons 
accused of these murders are to be tried at the ensuing assizes. 
The agent apphed to me personally, with this newspaper ; he 
stated that the obvious intention was to create a prejudice 
upon the approaching trials favorable to the murderers, and 
against the prosecutors. He stated what you — even you — 
will easUy beheve, that there never was a falsehood more flagi- 
tiously destitute of truth than the entire paragraph. I advised 
him, gentlemen, to wait on the Attorney-General in the most 
respectful manner possible ; to show him this paragraph, then 
to request to be allowed to satisfy him as to the utter false- 
hood of the assertions which this paragraph contained, which 
could be more easily done, as the judges who went that circuit 



120 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

could prove part of it to be false ; and I dii-ected him to en- 
treat that the Attorney-General, when fully satisfied of the 
falsehood, would prosecute the pubhsher of this, which, I 
think, I may call an atrocious libel. 

Gentlemen, the Attorney-General was accordingly waited 
on ; he was respectfully requested to prosecute upon the terms 
of having the falsehood of these assertions first proved to him. 
I need not tell you he refused. These are not the hbellers he 
prosecutes. Gentlemen, this not being a Hbel on any indivi- 
dual, no private individual can prosecute for it ; and the Attor- 
ney-General turns his press loose on the Catholics of the 
county of Monaghan, whilst he virulently assails Mr. Magee 
for what must be admitted to be comparatively mild and inof- 
fensive. 

No, gentlemen, he does not prosecute this libel. On the 
contrary, this paper is paid enormous sums of the public 
money. There are no less than five proclamations in the pa- 
per containing this libel ; and it was proved in my presence, 
in a court of justice, that, besides the proclamations and pub- 
lic advertisements, the two proprietors of the paper had each 
a pension of £400 per annum, for supporting government, as 
it was called. Since that period one of those proprietors has 
got an office worth, at least, £800 a year ; and the son of the 
other, a place of upwards of £400 per annum : so that, as it is 
likely that the original pensions continue, here may be an an- 
nual income of £2,000 paid for this paper, besides the thousands 
of pounds annually, which the insertion of the proclamations 
and public advertisements cost. It is a paper of the very 
lowest and most paltry scale of talent, and its circulation is, 
fortunately, very limited ; but it receives several thousands of 
pounds of the money of the men whom it foully and falsely 
calumniates. 

Would I could see the man who pays this proclamation 
money and these pensions at the Castle. [Here Mr. O'Con- 
nell tm-ned round to where Mr. Peele, Chief Secretary to the 
Lord Lieutenant, sat.] "Would I could see the man who, 
against the fact, asserted that the proclamations were inserted 
in all the papers, save in those whose proprietors were con- 
victed of a Hbel. I would ask him whether this be a paper 



SPEECH IN DEFENCE OP JOHN MAGEE. 121 

that ouglit to receive the money of the Irish people ? — whether 
this be the legitimate use of the pubHc purse ? And when you 
find this calumniator salaried and rewarded, where is the im- 
partiahty, the justice, or even the decency of prosecuting Mr. 
Magee for a libel, merely because he has not praised public 
men, and has discussed public affairs in the spirit of freedom 
and of the constitution ? Contrast the situation of Mr. Magee 
with the proprietor of the Hibernian Journal ; the one is prose- 
cuted with aU the weight and influence of the crown, the other 
pensioned by the ministers of the crown ; the one dragged to 
your bar for the sober discussion of political topics, the other 
hired to disseminate the most horrid calumnies ! Let the At- 
torney-General now boast of his impartiality ; can you credit 
him on your oaths ? Let him talk of his Veneration for the 
liberty of the press ; can you beheve him in your consciences? 
Let him call the press the protection of the people against the 
government. Yes, gentlemen, believe him when he says so. 
Let the press be the protection of the people ; he admits that 
it ought to be so. Will jon find a verdict for him, that shall 
contradict the only assertion upon which he and I, however, 
are both agreed ? 

Gentlemen, the Attorney-General is bound by this admis- 
sion ; it is part of his case, and he is the prosecutor here ; 
it is a part of the evidence before you, for he is the prose- 
cutor. Then, gentlemen, it is your duty to act upon that evi- 
dence, and to allow the press to afford some protection to the 
people. 

Is there amongst you any one friend to freedom ? Is there 
amongst you one man, who esteems equal and impartial jus-, 
tice, who values the people's rights as the foundation of pri- 
vate happiness, and who considers life as no boon withou.t 
liberty? Is there amongst you one friend to the constitu- 
tion — one man who hates oppression ? If there be, Mr. 
Magee appeals to his kindred mind, and confidently expects 
an acquittal. 

There are amongst you men of great religious zeal — of much 
pubhc piety. Are you sincere ? Do you believe what you pro- 
fess ? With all this zeal — with all this piety, is there any con- 
science amongst you? Is there any terror of violating your 



122 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

oaths ? Be ye hypocrites, or does genuine religion iuspke you? 
If you be sincere — if you have conscience — if your oaths can 
control your interests, then Mr. Magee confidently expects an 
acquittal. 

If amongst you there be cherished one ray of pm-e rehgion — 
if amongst you there glow a single spark of hberty — if I have 
alarmed rehgion, or roused the spuit of freedom in one breast 
amongst you, Mr. Magee is safe, and his country is served ; but 
if there be none — if you be slaves and hypocrites, he will await 
your verdict, and despise it. 



SPEECH IN THE BEITISH CATHOLIC ASSOCIA- 
TION, ON THE DEFEAT OF THE EMANCIPATION 
BILL, MAY 26, 1825. 



The measure of which we complained is of too recent a date, 
the injury wliich we have sustained is yet too fresh, too gall- 
ing in its effects, to allow my reason to assume the ascendant 
over my feelings, and to give my judgment time to operate on, 
and influence the tenor of my reflections. I shall neverthe- 
less be as respectful in my allusions, and as moderate in the 
remarks I have to offer, as the overboiling fervency of my 
Irish blood will permit. By rejecting that bill wliich the 
Commons had sent up to them for their concurrence and ap- 
proval, the House of Lords has inflicted a vital injury on the 
, stability of Enghsh power, and on Irish feelings and Irish 
honesty. They, however, would not be cast down by that 
injury. The Cathohcs were sometimes iu derision termed " Eo- 
man." I am a Catholic, and proud am I to say that in one 
thing at least I am a Eoman — I never wiU despair. But on 
what is this boastful assertion founded ? Why should I say 
that wliich I feel has not reason or sound policy to support it? 
Where now, I would ask, is there a rational hope for a Catho- 
hc ? Where shall I look for consolation under the present 
great and serious disappointment? Am I to look back? 
Alas ! there is nothing cheerino- in the events which have for 



ON THE DEFEAT OF THE EMANCIPATION BILL. 123 

some time past met us on tlie way to success and daslied oiir 
hopes to the . earth. Does history furnish any grounds for 
the supposition that those who have been found incapable of 
maintaining their phghted faith, and preserving the terms of 
a great national contract, will now, in the hour of success, be 
induced to yield any reason, any inducement to us to proceed 
in the course we have adopted ? Is this, I would ask, the ex- 
ample the Irish Cathohcs gave, when they had on two occa- 
sions come into power ? Did they, in the reign of Mary, seek 
by retaliation to avenge the blood of their slaughtered ances- 
tors ? No ! thank God, they did not ! and that at least was 
one triumphant consideration. Not one drop of Protestant 
blood had been shed — not one particle of Protestant property 
had been then sacrificed. In the reign of James II. the 
Cathohcs again came into power, and their conduct was 
marked by the same spirit of forbearance. I have heard it 
justly stated in the House of Commons — no, I must not say 
that, but I saw it in the newspapers, in the powerful speech of 
Mr. Twiss, which w^as distinguished ahke for vigor of thought, 
sti-engih of reasoning, and historical accuracy, that in the 
reign of James there were but fourteen Protestants in the 
House of Commons, and eight or ten in the House of Lords ; 
the rest were Catholics. "Were Protestants excluded from it 
by law ? No, the people returned both Protestants and Catho- 
hcs ; and no one then stood up to say that a man should not 
be permitted to sit in parliament unless he heard Mass and 
attended auricular confession. No, no, it was left to their 
enemies to say that Cathohcs should not be admitted there, 
for the sacrifice of the Mass was impious and idolatrous. 

[Mr. O'Connell then attended to a statement made by Mr. Daw- 
son, who thought fit to attribute persecution to the Irish Catholics 
in the reign of the second James, on the authority of Archbishop 
King, who was refuted by Eev. Dr. Leshe, and yet, in 1825, is 
quoted ia parliament to convict the Catholics of Ireland. He next 
entered into a brief history and defence of the Irish Catholic Asso- 
ciation, and reprobated the penal act which extinguished that body.] 

I call on the Catholics of England to co-operate with those 
of Ireland for the repeal of this act, for it is a step to return 



124 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

to tlie old penal law ; and how can I tell the people of Ireland 
they ought to be tranquil, and not ferment in their hearts that 
black stuff which makes political discontent mischievous — ^that 
fire suppressed, that explodes only the more dangerously on 
account of the compression that has withheld it ? How can 
I tell the iDeople of Ireland to hope, when they see tliis un- 
prmcipled, disastrous measure has been adopted ? I confess 
I do find ground for hope in the things called arguments which 
are employed against us, if I had not seen any in the records 
of ancient history, in the violation of treaties, and the recent 
case of the suppression of the Cathohc Association. I begin 
with the first in dignity, the keeper of the King's English con- 
science ; for the King, my lord, has three consciences— he has 
an English conscience, and the keeper of it is a hberal, and 
turns to the liberal side of it ; he has an Irish conscience, and 
I hope the keeper of it will very soon be a liberal person, and 
he will turn to the liberal side of it ; and his Majesty, my lord, 
has a Hanoverian conscience ; that conscience is in his own 
keeping ; it has no contradicting colors or differing sides — it 
is all liberahty and justice. Who cannot see that the guilt of 
refusing that to us which the King ]3ersonaUy gives to his 
Hanoverian subjects, lies in the miserable machinery of a 
boroughmongering admiaistration, which prevents the Eng 
from doing justice to all ? 

There were two other objections against us. I thank the 
quarter fi'om which they come : I thank him sincerely for the 
first of them, for I must unaffectedly admit its truth and jus- 
tice, and I win abide the event of it fairly. It was this — if 
you emancipate the Cathohcs, said the Lord Chancellor, you 
must equally give hberty of conscience to all classes of Dissent- 
ers. I thank you heartily, my Lord Eldon; that is exactly 
what we say ; our petition is that ; — we do not come before 
parliament, making a comparison of theological doctrines : we 
revere our own ; we are not indifferent to them ; we know their 
awful importance, but we say liberty of conscience is a 
sacred right. [A voice from the crowd : " You have it."] 
I thank the gentleman whose voice I hear. You, my Lord 
Duke, x>ossess hberty of conscience. Are you not the pre- 
mier peer of England — could any one deprive you of that 



ON THE DEFEAT OF THE EMANCIPATION BILL. 125 

right ? Could the King upon his throne, or the Chancellor on 
his bench, make any decree against it, if your conscience per- 
mitted ? There is such a Hberty of conscience as that alluded 
to in Spain, where every man is at liberty to be of the religion 
of the ruhng power ; but now that Ferdinand is returned, no 
man is allowed to dissent from that rehgion ; and let me not 
be brought to prefer the Cortes to him. They trod upon the 
Church, and threw away the people, and deserved to lose their 
power. The Dissenters have it not, for neither Smith, of Nor- 
wich, nor Wilks, the Secretary of that excellent Association for 
Liberty of Conscience (who published in their own, my creed on 
that subject), they could not fill an office in any corporation, for 
the moment they were proposed, the opposite candidate would 
tell them, "You have not taken the sacramental test," and the 
election would be void, and the candidate who had fewest 
votes would be returned. This was good and fair reason to 
hope that the principle is calculated, in spite of miserable big- 
otry and individual acrimony, to make its way all over Eng- 
land. The liberal portion of the Dissenters are with us. I 
find, therefore, reason to hope. Liberty of conscience is our 
principle, and even in despair I would retain it ; for I am con- 
fident that force may make hypocrites, but not true behevers — 
it may compel outward profession, but it is not in man's power 
to change the heart ; and because I know that force is always 
resorted to by him that thinks he has the worst of the argu- 
ment. But, for my part, being conscientiously convinced of 
the superiority of the CathoHc religion over every other — and 
puttmg it to this awful test- of sincerity, that I know an eter- 
nity depends upon it — with that awful conviction, all I ask of 
my Protestant brethren, who beheve their own rehgion to be 
the best, is, that they would give the same practical proof of 
their conviction of its superiority. Let them give their reli- 
gion what I ask for mine — a clear stage and no favor, and let 
the advantage be decided by conscientious men and the will 
of the eternal God. 

Another argument of the Lord Chancellor was — it seemed, 
indeed, rather a word than an argument — that this was a Pro- 
testant constitution, and the words " Protestant constitution " 
came out very frequently. This was rather an assertion than an 



126 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL o'CONNELL. 

argument, and it has this defect as an assertion, that it happens, 
my lord, not to be true. There are four descendants amongst 
the Cathohc nobihty of the day of the barons who extorted 
Magna Charta from a tyrant. It was Catholics who instituted 
the hereditary succession in the House of Lords as a separate 
House : it was Catholics who instituted the representation of 
the people in the House of Commons : it was Cathohcs who 
instituted trial by jury, standing as a shield between the peo- 
ple and power, making the administration of the law a domes- 
tic concern, and preventing any man giving a false and flagi- 
tious verdict to-day in favor of despotism, lest he himself should 
be the victim the nest. Are not these ingredients in the con- 
stitution ? I would not forget the treason law of Edward III., 
which is the perfection of wisdom in that respect, for many 
and many a victim would have been sent to premature death 
and destruction but for the advantage of that Catholic statute 
of Edward III. ; and whenever despotism has ruled over this 
country, the first step that has been taken, from time to time, 
and it was one which immediately followed the Eeformation, 
was to repeal that Catholic statute, and deprive the people of 
its benefits. We have it now ; but though we have it now 
through its being restored by a Protestant parliament, it was 
drawn up by Catholic hands, it was passed by Catholic votes, 
it was signed by a Cathohc King, and wiU Lord Eldon teU me 
that the treason law, the trial by jury, the House of Lords, 
and the office of Chancellor, too, are no portions of this Pro- 
testant constitution? If that office did not exist, I suspect 
that the Protestantism of the Chancellor would not be so 
extremely vivid as it is at present. The seals he bears, the 
mace which is carried before him, were borne by, and carried 
before many and many a Catholic bishop ; and the first lay- 
man who held them was the martyred Sir Thomas More, who, 
as it was well said in parliament, left the office with ten pounds 
in his pocket ; a Cathohc example to the present Protestant 
ChanceUor. 

Protestant constitution ! "What is it, if money be not one of 
the valuable concerns of the constitution ? WiU the Chancel- 
lor say it is not ? If the constitution be Protestant, let the 
Protestants pay the tithes and the taxes ; let them pay the 



ON THE DEFEAT OE THE EMANCIPATION BILL. 127 

churcli rates and the Grand Jury cess for us in Ireland. If 
it be a Protestant constitution let it be so entirely : let us not 
have to fight their battles or pay their taxes. This is the ad- 
mirable and inimitable equity of the Lord Chancellor. Here 
is the keeper of a conscience for you ! Here is a distributor 
of equity. It shall be Protestant to the extent of everything 
that is valuable and useful : to the extent of everything that 
is rewarding and dignified ; for every place of emolument and 
authority, and everything that elevates a man, and is the 
recompense of legitimate ambition. To this extent it shaU be 
Protestant ; but for the burdens of the state — for the shedding 
of human blood in defence of the throne — for all that bears 
on a man, even to the starvation of his family by the weight 
of taxation which so few are able to pay in this country, and 
by which so many have been reduced to poverty in Ireland 
(for have I not seen the miserable blanket, and the single po- 
tato pot, sold by the tax-gatherer in my native country?) Oh, 
shall I, I say, be told that for all that is useful the constitu- 
tion shall be Protestant, and that it shall cease to be so the 
moment there is anything of oppression, money-making, 
grinding, or taxation ? Is it just to take the entire value and 
give no valuable consideration in return ? Is it just to accept 
labor and pay no wages ? Is this equity in the High Court 
of Chancery? From your tribunal I appeal to the Hving 
God, who shall judge us all, and in his presence I proclaim 
the foul iniquity, the barefaced injustice of loading us with 
aU the burdens of the state, and keeping us from its advan- 
tages. 

After the Chancellor I would refer to the speech of a right 
Eeverend Bishop, which was said to have been sonorous, mu- 
sical and well delivered — highly pleasing to his party. It 
reminded him of a story told by Addison, who heard a lady 
in a carriage utter a loud scream, and supposing her suffering 
under some violence or injury, inquired what was the matter, 
and was told nothing ; but the lady had been told she had a 
fine voice, and had been showing it by screaming. She only 
wished to make an exhibition. The bishop, too, was only 
screaming, and had formerly screamed the other way. The 
first part of his speech, as I read it in the newspaper, was a 



128 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

good essay on disinterestedness ! We were called, interested, 
selfish ; but would the Eight Reverend Bishop explain how 
it was that he had formerly been favorably disposed towards 
the CathoHcs, till he became tutor to the Earl of Liverpool's 
ne^Dhew, and that then all at once a change was effected in his 
mind. He is young — there are a great many other bishops, 
and he was certainly fortunate in his chance, for he adopted, 
if not a better, yet more enriching faith. It might be by a 
miracle — for a Protestant bishop might work mkacles as well 
as Prince Hohenlohe — it might be by a mhacle, that the new 
light broke in on the bishop just at the right time ; that he 
was kept in darkness to a certain hour, and then was suddenly 
made to see the danger, and to turn from a fi'iend to an ene- 
my. I have no objection to fair enmity ,^ but the Bishop of 
Chester's enmity was not fair. In his speech he had quoted a 
part of a speech of Doctor Dromgoole ; I believe, too, from 
what I recollect, that the bishop quoted an exaggerated ver- 
sion, and he stated that this speech had been approved of by 
the Catholic Association, and by all the Catholic priests, and 
at Home. I heard this with great astonishment, for, in fact, 
Doctor Dromgoole's speech was the only one I ever recollect- 
ed which had been condemned at a public meeting. 

It had been pronounced late in the evening. I was not 
present, or the sun would not have gone down on it unre- 
proved — and on the next day an extraordinary meeting of the 
CathoUc Board was summoned, and the speech condemned. 
He called the Protestant faith a novelty, and it was stated to 
him that whatever o23inions he chose to discuss among theolo- 
gians, he must not insult the Protestants. Where the Bishop 
of Chester learned that this speech had been approved of at 
Eome, I do not know, but I suppose it might be by the same 
vivacity of fancy, and the same energy of imagination from 
which he learned that the speech had been approved of in Ire- 
land. I arraign him of inventmg it. If the Cathohc bishops 
who were examined before the lords, — if Doctor Murray, the 
sanctity of Avhose life was displayed in the suavity of his 
manners, and who was the mildest of all Christians — if Doc- 
tor Doyle, whose understanding was as ^dgorous as his man- 
ners were simple, who possessed an exhaustless store of know- 



ON THE DEFEAT OE THE EMANCIPATION BILL. 129 

ledge, and whose gigantic intellect could readily convey thera 
to the mind of every other man — if these prelates in their ex- 
amination had invented anything Uke this against the Protes- 
tants, though he revered them as the representatives of those 
Christian bishops who had first estabhshed the Catholic Faith 
in Ireland ; if the Lord Bishop of Chester could point out to 
him anything in their evidence similar to the invention he had 
alluded to, I wiU at once brand them as calumniators. I will 
not say anything of this kind to the Bishop of Chester, be- 
cause I do not belong to the same church with him ; but if he 
will point out to me anything so false in theu^ evidence, I will 
teU the Irish bishops they are hars and calumniators, and 
that they have broken the commandment, for they had borne 
false witness against their neighbor. I would, however, say 
no more of the Bishop of Chester's speech, but if any more 
positive proof of its error were wanting, he had only to turn 
over the Dublin Evening Post for half an hom% and he would 
find the whole proceedings of the meeting at which Dr. 
Dromgoole's speech was censured. 

[Mi\ O'Connell here took occasion to eulogize Mr. Canning, Mr. 
Plunkett and Mr. Brownlow, and contrasted the conduct of the 
latter with that of the Marquis of Anglesea.] 

The contrast I was going to offer, and that which would 
alone make us despair, if I did not know my countrymen bet- 
ter, is that of the noble and gallant deserter, the Marquis of 
Anglesea. He said, now was the time to fight. But, most no- 
ble Marquis, we are not going to fight at all, and above all 
things, most noble Marquis, we are not going to fight now, un- 
der favor. This may be your time to fight — ^you may want us 
to fight ere long with you, as you wanted us before — your 
glories, and your medals, and your dignities, and your titles, 
were bought by the young blood of Catholic Ireland. We 
fought. Marquis of Anglesea, and you know it well — we fought, 
and you are Marquis ; if we had not fought with you, your 
island of Anglesea would ere this have shrunk into a cabbage 
garden. And where would now have been the mighty con- 
queror of Europe : he, who had talent to command victory, and 
judgment to look for services, and not creeds to reward men 



130 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

for merits, and not for professions of faitli ; where would he 
have been if Ireland had not stood by you ? I myseK have 
worn, not only the tra23pings of woe, but the emblems of sin- 
cere mourning, for more than one gallant relative of mine 
who have shed their blood under your commands. We can 
fight — we will fight when England wants us. But we will not 
fight against her at present, and I trust we will not fight for her 
at all until she does us justice. 

But, most noble Marquis, though your soldiers fought gal- 
lantly and weU with you, in a war which they were told was 
just and necessary, are you quite sure the soldiers will fight in 
a crusade against the unarmed and wretched peasantry of Ire- 
land ? Your speech is published ; it will, when read in Ar- 
magh, and the neighboring counties, give joy, and wiU be cel- 
ebrated in the nest Orange procession ; and again, as before, 
Cathohc blood will be shed ; but most noble Marquis, the 
earth has not covered all the blood that has been so shed ; it 
cries yet for vengeance to heaven, and not to man ; that blood 
may yet bring on an unfortunate hour of retribution ; and if 'it 
do, what have you to fight with? Count you on a gallant 
army ? There are English gentry amongst its officers, the 
sons and descendants of those who wielded the sword for lib- 
erty, never to strike down to slavery their fellow men. Eng- 
hsh chivahy will not join with you, most noble Marquis of 
Anglesea : and though you have deserted her and taken the 
prudent side of the Commander-in-Chief, yet, gallant Marquis, 
I think you have reckoned without yom' host. 

Let me teU you this story, sir. I am but an humble indi- 
vidual. It happened to me, not many months ago, to be going 
through England ; my family were in a carriage, on the box of 
wliich I was placed ; there came up on the road, eight or ten 
sergeants and corporals, vnth two hundred and fifty recruits. 
I perceived at once the countenances of my unfortunate coun- 
trymen laughing as they went along, for no other reason than 
because they were ahve. They saw me, and some of them 
recognized me ; they instantly bm-st from their sergeants and 
corporals, formed around my carriage, and gave me three 
cheers, most noble Marquis. "WeU, may God bless them, 
wherever they are, poor fellows! Oh, you reckon without 



ON THE DEFEAT OF THE EMANCIPATION BILL. 131 

your host, let me tell you, when you think that a British army 
wiU trample on a set of petitioners for their rights — beggars 
for a httle charity, who are looking up to you with eyes lifted, 
and hands bent down. You wiU not fight us now, most noble 
Marquis ; and let me tell you, if the battle comes, you shall 
not have the choice of your position either. 

But though he is an excellent soldier, the Marquis is a spe- 
cial bad logician — no blame to him ; for, in the same speech, 
he said he was still for Cathohc emancipation, and would re- 
turn to us as soon as he was certain that emancipation was 
consistent with Protestant ascendency. Ascendency forsooth ! 
Catholic emancipation supposes universal equalization of civil 
eligibility, and it cannot consist with the ascendency of any 
party. The Marquis is ready to open the window to us as 
soon as he is sure the sun will not shine through it. I am not 
afraid of his sword. Still less do I feel in peril from his logic. 
The King of Prussia, when the Saxons left him, one fiiie morn- 
ing, said, " Let them go against us, it is better that aU the en- 
emy should be together, and all our friends together also." 
I make a present of you, to our opponents, most noble Mar- 
quis. Him who thus deserted us, and hallooed in the ranks of 
those whose cry was rehgious dissensions, — him have I con- 
trasted with the true genuine Protestant Christian, who, firm 
in his own opinion, was the enemy of the Catholics, so long as 
he believed them to be the enemies of liberty, religious and 
civil ; but who, the moment he was convinced that they were 
equally its friends as himself, became our supporter, and set the 
glorious golden example of a perfect sacrifice of aU that httle 
pride and jealousy which attach to a change of genuine opin- 
ion — ^him have I contrasted with Mr. Brownlow, who, be it 
ever remembered, stood by no Commander-in-Chief, and who 
can only expose himself in injury and expense, by a sacrifice 
to principles which the Marquis of Angelsea may admire, but 
cannot afford possibly to imitate. 

[Mr. O'Connell then proceeded to panegyrize the public exer- 
tions of Sir Francis Burdett, Lord Nugent, and the Earl of Don- 
oughmore ; and passed some severe sarcasms on Sir T. Lethbridge 
and Mr. Banks, senior,] 



132 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNEIJL. 

There was one speech more on which I will say a few 
words — it was the speech of Lord Liverpool. I have never 
read a polemical speech of the noble lord till that. The noble 
lord seemed to have been employed in a manner quite becom- 
ing a great statesman; disregarding the course which our 
ancient enemy, France, was pursuing : not thinking that she 
was daily increasing her armies — that she was creating an effi- 
cient navy — that she was rapidly paying off her debt — that 
titheless France was daily improving her resources, and get- 
ting rid of the burdens which the war had left on her — that 
she was building a large class of frigates, and aj)peared as if 
inclined, on some fit opportunity, to dispute with us once more 
the emphe of the seas. Of all these facts the noble lord 
seemed heedless ; they were perhaps beneath the notice of his 
great mind. He did not calculate on the rising generation of 
America, that coimtry in which alone the Irish Cathohc has 
fair play. He did not appear to consider in what time a west- 
erly wind, which would shut us up in the channel, would waft 
a fleet to the shores of Ireland, perhaps at some period of dis- 
tress and discontent, when arms and not men might be want- 
ing. All these were subjects below the consideration of Lord 
Liverpool's great mind. He was busied with one of much 
greater importance to the state. He was engaged in polemi- 
cal discussions about auricular confession and penance, and 
the mode of administering the sacrament ; and as the result of 
his studies in those important matters, he poured forth a rich 
and luscious discourse on , an admiring audience. In the 
course of that speech, the noble lord read the House of Com- 
mons no very gentle lecture for having presumed to send up 
such a bill. Here was another reformer. It had been said, 
perhaps imtruly, that the great majority of the House were 
sent into their places by several members of the Peers : if that 
were true, it might perhaps account for the scolding given for 
having passed a bill not approved by their masters. Be that 
however as it might, the House of Commons were scolded — 
perhaps they deserved it. The noble lord had expressed an 
opinion, that the religion of several milhons of his fellow-sub- 
jects was such, as. to render them imfit for the enjoyment of 
civil rights to the same extent as the Protestant. What new 



ON THE DEFEIT OP THE EMANCIPATION BILL. 133 

light was it tliat broke upon tile noble Earl's mind, so as to 
produce this impression, so opposite to that which he seemed 
to feel only one year before ? 

The noble Earl appeared to hold a very different opinion of 
the Irish people last year. On the 8th of April, 1824, he was 
reported to have said in his place in the House, speaking of 
the Irish, " that whatever they may be in their own country, 
I say of them in this, that there does not exist, on the face of 
the globe, a more industrious, a more honest, or more kindly- 
disposed people." Surely they have not changed their reli- 
gion since then ; and if, in 1824, that rehgion could make them 
" honest, industrious, and kindly-disposed," why should it be 
urged as a ground for exclusion from the fuU enjoyment of the 
rights of British subjects in 1825 ? What other use would a 
statesman make of rehgion but to instill morality and public 
order ? The noble Earl went on in the same speech to say, " I 
thuik it material to bear this testimony in their favor, because 
whatever may be the evils of Ireland, and from whatever 
source they may proceed, it is impossible for any man to ima- 
ging that they arise from any defect in the people. We may 
boldly assert that it is impossible to find a more valuable class 
of people in any country in the world." And yet it was this 
most valuable class of persons that the noble Earl in his late 
address would condemn to eternal exclusion from the fuU 
benefits of the constitution. Did the noble Earl imagine that 
the drivelling nonsense of Dr. Duigenan, which he had kept 
bottled up for seven or eight years, and now drew forth to 
treat the British nation, would drive a people such as he had 
described from their purpose? Let the honest lord stand 
forth and defend his consistency. He had made that speech 
from which he had just given the extract in 1824 ; the second- 
speech was made in 1825. In the interim the Duke of York 
had made his declaration of eternal hostility to the great ques- 
tion of emancipation. The Bishop of Chester was not the 
only convert which that speech had made. The noble Earl, to 
use a vulgar adage, "knew how the cat jumped." Oh, my 
Lord Duke, with what pleasure will this speech of my Lord 
Liverpool and that of his Eoyal Highness of York be received 
at the meeting of the aUied Sovereigns — ^those mighty despots 



134 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL CONNELL. 

who, tjTannical as tliey are, still respect the consciences of 
their subjects ? "What joy will they not feel at reading this 
wise effusion of England's prime minister ? They will in their 
hearts say, " Let it go forth, it will work for our views." They 
will add : " Eockites, keep your spirits — 

Durate et vosmet rebus servate secundis. 

Or, as Cromwell said, " ' Trust in the Lord and rest on your 
pikes.' Matters are going on in the way that you and we and 
the enemies of England's peace could wish." Such would be 
the sentiments of all who were envious of England's power, 
and jealous of that freedom by which she acquired it. Then- 
feelings on this subject would not be less gratified when they 
read, if they could beheve it, the calculation made by Mr. 
Leslie Eoster, showing that the population of Ireland was less 
by two millions than it was generally considered. That hon- 
orable gentleman, who was the more fit to be the head peda- 
gogue of a large school, than at the head of a respectable 
county (a situation by the way in which the votes of Cathohcs 
had helped to placed him), had come to parliament with 'his 
primer and his multiphcation table, and endeavored to show 
that the Cathohcs of L'eland were not so numerous by two 
milhons as was generally beheved. He began by counting the 
number of children that attended some of the charity schools, 
and then taking the number of parents that each child had, 
which was easy to ascertain ; but he omitted to consider how 
many children each set of parents had, which in Ireland might 
perhaps be more difficult. He also omitted to notice the num- 
ber of children that never attended at those schools ; but the 
result of his calculation was, that the Catholics were less by 
two millions than their advocates stated them to be. 

I have heard of killing off by computation by Captain Bo- 
badil ; but this beat Bobadil quite out. However, the error 
was not too gross for the party to which it was addressed, for 
the noble Earl swallowed it, Bobadil and aU. What, I beg 
calmly to ask, would be the effect of the noble lord's denun- 
ciation of perpetual exclusion, upon the four of five miUions 
of Cathohcs which Mr. Leslie Foster had left ? (for he would 
admit for the moment that they were reduced two milhons 



ON TEE DEFEAT OP THE EMANCIPATION BILL. 135 

witliout the aid of Lord Anglesea's broadsword.) They were 
told they could not be free while the Protestant church estab- 
lishment existed, for that their entire emancipation was incom- 
patible with the safety of that estabhshment, was this not in 
effect putting every man, woman and child of the five millions 
of Catholics in hostility to that church? I beg most dis- 
tinctly to deny the justice of the assumption on which this 
argument of exclusion was founded. The Cathohcs did not 
wish to see the Protestant church subverted. I would solemn- 
ly declare, that I would rather perish than see the Protestant 
church subverted and my own church substituted in its place. 

[The learned gentleman, after adverting to the petitions from 
England in favor of a repeal of the assessed taxes, which amount- 
ed to about three millions, proceeded to observe, that that sum and 
much more might be saved to this country, by merely doing an act 
of justice to the Irish people.] 

Ireland now costs this country four millions a year more 
than her revenue produced. Let justice be done — let peace 
and content be brought about by this act of just concession, 
and Ireland, instead of being a burden to England, will prove 
a rich source of wealth and strength to the empire. Capital 
will flow into the country, her resources for its employment 
would become known, the facHities for every kind of com- 
merce which her ports afforded would ensure a flow of wealth 
to English capitalists — the only persons who can take advan- 
tage of them — an advantage which they were deterred from 
seeking by the present unsettled state of the country. See 
what sources of annoyance, of war and bloodshed Wales 
and Scotland were, until they were incorporated in one gov- 
ernment with England, and until their inhabitants were fully 
admitted to all the advantages of the constitution as Brit- 
ish subjects, while they now contribute much to the strength 
of the empire. Why should not the same attempt be made 
with respect to Ireland? Is she to be forever excluded from 
the fuU benefits of the constitution? Before I conclude, I 
beg to notice a paper which had within these four days been 
circulated with great assiduity by the enemies of emancipa- 
tion. One of those papers I now hold in my hand. It called 



136 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

on all friends of tlie Protestant religion to read some extracts 
whicli it contained from tlie Journal des Debats, and to pause 
before tliey gave any support to the prayer of the Catholics. 
I will briefly state the nature of the case mentioned in the ex- 
tracts, in order to show the gross injustice of founding upon 
it any charge against the Catholics. In the department of 
Aisne, an application was made by some Protestants for the 
erection of a Protestant church and the appointment of a 
minister of then' religion to officiate in it. Now by the law of 
France the government is obliged in any place where there are 
five hundred Protestants residing, to erect a church for them, 
and to provide a minister to officiate in it. That clergyman 
was paid one hundred pounds a year, while a Catholic curate 
officiating for a similar number of Catholics, received only 
eighty pounds a year. The reason was, that a Protestant 
clergyman might have a wife to maintain, while a Cathohc 
had not. The apphcation was refused, not because it was 
intended to discourage the Protestant religion, but because the 
number of Protestants making application did not amount to 
one half the number for which the law authorized the build- 
ing of a church — and this was the gross instance of rehgious 
oi^pression of which such loud complaints were heard in this 
country! What would have been said if there were three 
hundred Protestants living in one parish and only one Catho- 
lic, and that those three hundred were not only obhged to 
provide a place of worship for themselves, but also to build, 
at their entire expense, a church for the use of one Catholic ? 
Would not all England ring with outcries against the injustice 
of the act? And yet an act of this description, with the ex- 
ception that the parties were placed in situations the reverse 
of what he had described, had just occurred in Ireland. 

A petition was a short time ago presented to the House of 
Commons, from three hundred Cathohc inhabitants of a j)arish 
in Ireland, the name of which would sound very harsh in Eng- 
lish ears, and which could with difficulty be pronounced by 
Enghsh hps, the parish of Aghado. The petitioners stated 
that they were the only inhabitants of the parish except one, 
and that one was a Protestant ; that there was no Protestant 
church in the parish, but that the Protestant inhabitant had 



ON THE DEFEAT OF THE EMANCIPATION BILL. 137 

the use of a pew in a neigliboring parish church, and they 
complained of being called upon to bear the expense of build- 
ing a church for that one Protestant. What, he repeated, 
would have been said if the petitioners happened to be Pro- 
testants, and the one inhabitant a Cathohc ? But because 
they were Cathohcs, it was passed over as a matter of course, 
and not a word was heard about the oppression of the case. 

Another subject on which a great outcry had been raised, 
was lately stated in a French journal, the Constitutionnel. It 
appeared that a church at Nerac had been in jDOSsession of a 
Protestant congregation since 1804. This church had origi- 
nally belonged to the Convent of St. Clare. In the French 
revolution, when the axe and the guillotine were in daily use 
against the ministers and professors of religion, the nuns were 
turned out upon the world, and the convent church was used 
as a storehouse. In this situation it continued until 1804, 
when it was given to a Protestant congregation, with no other 
title of gift or purchase than the mere proces verbal which as- 
sented to the application which had been made for it. Not 
long back the Convent of St. Clare was restored, and not un- 
naturally, the nuns applied for the church which had originally 
belonged to them. A regular legal proceeding was com- 
menced for its recovery, and the members of the Protestant 
congregation, not being able to prove a good title, were 
obhged to give it up. For this, however, the Times and 
Chronicle, and other Mberal journals, were quite enraged; 
their very types seemed to fly about in a passion. But what 
was there in the case to call for such angry comment ? 

It was said that the cure of Nerac made use of some very 
ilhberal expressions on the occasion of regaining possession ; 
if he did, there was no man connected with the Times or 
Chronicle who would more readily condemn any ^uch expres- 
sion than he would. Let it, however, be recollected, that the 
charge made was the charge of an enemy. It was made by a 
party of the old Jacobin school — of those whose friends had 
succeeded in overthrowing the altar of France for a time, and 
now, when rehgion was restored, would wish to hold up its 
ministers to contempt or reproach. I think the charge, coming 
from such a quarter, ought not to be entitled to any more 



138 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL o'CONNELL. 

weiglit than an idle calumny wliicli might be found against 
himself in the John Bull of this town. 

Suppose dmiug the power of Cromwell — that scriptural 
Christian, with texts in his mouth and sword in his hand — 
suppose that rough commander were to have bestowed a Pro- 
testant church on a Catholic congregation or an any of the 
various sects of Christians (I speak without disrespect of any) 
which swarmed through the land in his day, and suppose, on 
the restoration, it was to be claimed, and a legal process insti- 
tuted for its recovery, would the decision of that claim in favor 
of the original owners, be a proof of bigotry or oppression in the 
Church of England ? Why then should that be called bigotry 
in one case, which would be an act of justice in the other ? 
Talk of bigotry in France from CathoHcs to Protestants ! In 
that country both were ahke ehgible to places of trust and 
power in the state ; but whoever heard in any of their pubHc 
assembhes — in the Chamber of Deputies— of a Lethbridge 
or an Ingiis getting up in his place and reviling with coarse 
epithets the religion of his Protestant fellow-subjects ? (By 
the way, I intended to make a few remarks on the Index Ex- 
purgatorius of Sir H. Ingiis, but I forgive him.) To those 
who talked of Catholic bigotry I would say, let the Catholics 
of this country be placed on the same terms of equality with 
their Protestant brethren, as the Protestants of France are, 
with respect to their Catholic fellow-subjects, and I would 
rest perfectly satisfied. 

I fear I have trespassed too long on the patience of the 
meeting — but there were one or two points more on which I 
would say a word. The bill which the Lords had rejected was 
accompanied part of the way in the other House, with two 
measures called its wings. Those measures were condemned 
by some who were friendly to the great question ; but the 
Catholics of Ireland were not the authors of those measures ; 
they ^^ere no party to their origin. Of that bill which went 
to make a provision for the Catholic clergy I would say, that 
the clergy desired no such provision. They are content to 
serve their flocks for the humble pittance which they now 
receive. The rewards to which they looked for their incessant 
and valuable labors, are — let every hair of the Bishop of 



ON THE DEFEAT OF THE EMANCIPATION BILL. 139 

Chester's wig stand on end at liearing it — not of this but of ano- 
ther world. It is not the Cathohcs who desire those measures. 
They are sought for by the Protestants, who look upon them 
as some sort of security ; and the Cathohcs are disposed to 
make some sacrifice to honest prejudices, by acceding to that 
which they did not approve. It was this feehng which pro- 
duced those measures, and brought on that ridiculous scene 
of one of his Majesty's ministers strongly objectiug to the 
" wings," while another was eagerly flapping them on, until, 
hke the tomb of Mahomet, the Cathohc bill hung suspended 
between the two counteracting influences. As to the second 
bill, respecting the forty shilling freeholders, it is one which I 
cannot approve. I am too much of a reformer, and of that 
class called " radical," to wish for any such alteration. I did 
assent to it only because it was considered that Protestants 
desired it. I would much rather have emancipation without 
it. They are now, however, gone by, and I hope they will 
never again make their appearance — certain it is, I shall never 
wish for them, unless they are earnestly desired by the Pro- 
testants. 

I now, my lord Duke, take my leave ; I fear I have ex- 
hausted the patience of this meeting. I am grateful for the 
attention with which I have been heard ; I have spoken under 
feehngs, perhaps, of some irritation— certainly under those of 
deep disappointment. A crowd of thoughts have rushed upon 
me, and I have given utterance to them as they arose, without 
allowing my judgment a pause as to which I should select and 
which restrain. I now go back to my own country, where I 
expect to find a feverish restlessness at having insult added to 
our injuries. Our enemies — ^perhaps I ought to say oppo- 
nents — ^have offered this insult ; they have barbed with dis- 
grace, the dart of death. It will be impossible not to expect 
a degree of soreness at the way in which our claims have been 
met — at this additional iusult. It is impossible not to feel 
disappointed at the manner in which we have seen Lord Liver- 
pool truckle to the nonsense about the coronation oath (some 
person here said No, no.) I repeat it, he did ; and my con- 
viction is that aU we heard reported of him in the newspapers 
was dictated from that quarter. "We shall now return to Ire- 



140 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL o'CONNELL. 

land, and there advise our countrymen to be patient — to bear 
the further delay of justice with calmness, but not to relax 
their fair, open, and legitimate efforts in again seeking for 
then- rights. They have put down one association ; I promise 
to treat them to another. They shall trench further on your 
hberties — they shall dive deeper into the ratals of the consti- 
tution before they drive us from our purpose. We shall go on, 
but it will be without anger or turbulence. In that steady 
course we will continue to use all legitimate means to accom- 
plish our object, until Enghsli good sense shall overcome 
bigotry in high stations — shall put down intolerance in per- 
sons great in office — ^until the minister be diiven back to the 
half honesty which he before possessed, or to that retirement 
which he rigidly deserves." 



SPEECH ON THE TREATY OF LIMERICK, 1826. 



[On submitting to the Catholic Association, in 1826, the draft of 
a petition to parliament, asking that the provisions of the treaty 
of Limerick be carried into effect, Mr. O'Connell spoke as fol- 
lows :] 

The question is narrowed to a single point, and to any one 
reviewing the facts which history presented, it was impossible 
to deny that the treaty has been foully and flagitiously vio- 
lated. The x^enal code was a violation of it, and while a par- 
ticle of that code remains, so long the solemn compact entered 
into between the English government and the Irish people is 
a disgraceful monument of British perfidy. That treaty was 
a solemn, dehberate and authorized agreement. It was signed 
by bishops and commanders, and it was signed by Ginkle, 
who had the command of his government to give even better 
terms than it insured, and to make peace on any conditions, 
no matter how favorable to the people of Limerick, and of 
course to the whole people of Ireland. Who is it, who looks 
at history, that can be surprised that the wish to effect a 
peace should exist on the part of the Enghsh ? At the time of 



SPEECH ON THE TEEATY OE LIMEEICE. 141 

tlae war England was split into parties and dissensions. "Wil- 
liam had tlie adherence of the Whigs to his cause, but the 
Tories, who were the more numerous, though not so powerful, 
were arrayed against him. The Tories were like the cowardly 
Orange faction of the present day ; they were mean and das- 
tardly, and took especial care to keep themselves from every 
enterprise ia which their persons would be endangered. The 
Scotch highlanders, a brave, hardy, and chivalrous race, who 
were CathoHcs, were devoted to the house of Stuart, and so 
were those of the lowlands too. The Calvinists of that coun- 
try were ia the same situation with the Irish of the present 
day ; their consciences were opj^ressed — their religious hberty 
was restricted. They fought however in the field for their 
religion. Their efforts, although courageous and adventurous, 
were not suited to the meek spirit of Christianity. I would 
not fight for rehgion, because rehgion does not inculcate nor 
sanction such an act ; but for my civil rights, I trust in God, 
there is no man who has a more sincere regard for their value, 
or who would make greater sacrifices and efforts for their 
defence. In England there were many enemies against Wil- 
liam, and his situation was precarious. In Ireland his pros- 
pects were bad and discouraging : the Irish forces, though in 
part unsuccessful, were not discomfited, and they were learn- 
ing those rules of discipline, without which an army is no 
more than a mob. The battle of the Boyne was lost not by 
the inferiority of the Irish forces, but by the paltry, pitiful 
cowardice of James. He only appeared once in the battle on 
that day. He made only one appeal, and that was when the 
soldiery of England was cutting down by the troops of Ire- 
land under Hamilton — then he exclaimed, " spare my Eng- 
Ush subjects !" Like another Duke of Tork he took up his 
position in the rear, and the races of the Helder had a glori- 
ous prototype in the races of the Boyne. " Change generals," 
exclaimed the gallant Began, in the evening when the battle 
was done, " Change generals, and we will fight the battle over 
agaia!" Three thousand were wounded in that battle and 
but three hundred were taken prisoners ! How illustrative of 
the humanity of the conquerors ! Still Clare was open, and 
its batteries were in possession of the Irish. The fortifications 



142 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

of Limerick were jet at their command — Frencli succors were 
daily expected — the war between England and France Avas 
already declared — and with such opposition, were it not for 
the treaty of Limerick, "WilHam would have been driven back 
into Holland, if even there he would have found a refuge 
from the French. The winter was fast approaching. His 
armies consisted of some Dutch and some Brandenburg troops, 
and some that were called Irish on whom no reliance was 
placed : they were the Enniskillen and Londonderry regiments. 
Oh ! what regiments these wore ! Schomberg, in speaking of 
them, was only puzzled to decide which of the two regiments 
was more thievish, because both the regiments were much 
less remarkable for then' valor than for their propensity to rob 
and steal. Their officers were peasants — plebeians who had 
advanced themselves by their baseness, and like the Orange- 
men of the present time, they were formidable only to an un- 
armed people. It was not unhkely that Mr. Dawson was the 
descendant of one of these peasants. The pleasure he felt in 
reverting to those times might probably be thus accounted for. 
This Mr. Dawson, who, if he were not a clerk in office, would 
not be worthy of contradiction, asserts many extraordinary 
things respecting this country. He felt no interest in preserv- 
ing its character, because, hke his brother Orangemen, he was 
not indigenous to the soil. They must certainly be exotics, 
for if half their venom was natural, the influence of St. Pat- 
rick would be effectual in banishing the reptiles from among 
us. But the reptile stiU lives, and here are its hisses. 

[Mr. O'Connell here took up a printed report of Mr. Dawson's 
speech.] 

Mr. Dawson tells us that the history of Ireland is a mere 
waste — not a spot in it to vary the dismal scene but London- 
derry, that furnished the robbers to Marshal Schomberg. 
"Let us trace," says he, "its dark and bloody progress. 
When a foreign foe invaded, it shrunk at the foot of an insig- 
nificant conqueror." And this is what Mr. Dawson said of a 
country to which he boasts of belonging. Let me tell him 
this country was never beat. It was by Irishmen she was 
always ruined. Their treachery and disunion were the cause 



SPEECH ON THE TEEATY OP LIMEEICK. 143 

of her defeat. Four fifths of tlie Irish troops joined the 
Cromwellian invaders under Dermot, and it was to their deser- 
tion, and not to the superior arms of her enemies, that her 
coaquest was attributable. Mr. Dawson proceeded — "con- 
tinued insurrection, intestine wars, bloody massacres, treaclie- 
rous treaties." Treacherous treaties! Come forward, Mr. 
Dawson, with your native host of Orangemen, and prove 
infraction of one single treaty on the part of the Irish. I ask 
but one. But he takes care to make the charge general. Oh ! 
that is the way in which hbels and mahgnant imputations are 
uttered and circulated ; for he knows he cannot substantiate 
it. "Yersatur in generalibus." Oh! how fatally true the 
Irish were to their treaties may be read in that of Limerick. 
The treaty was signed before communication was had to the 
other part of the army, which were, Mr. Chairman, under the 
command of an ancestor of your own. Before it was com- 
pleted, the French fleet with men and arms arrived at Dingle. 
Some argued that the treaty was not binding — that it had 
been agreed upon only in the South. What was the reply ? 
" We know we are not bound by the treaty, but Irish honor is 
pledged, and never shall we stain it." And well did they observe 
it. They dismissed the French troops — they admitted their 
enemies. They relied on Enghsh faith and Orange honor, and 
the consequence, the natural consequence, was that they v/ere 
duped. But I turn on Mr. Dawson and say to him — you accuse 
us of violating treaties ; if you cannot show me one you are a 
slanderer. And I turn on him again and say — show me one 
sohtary treaty that England has ever performed toward us, and 
I will forgive her all the rest. No, sir, from the time the first 
footstep of the Saxon polluted our land, down to the last, and 
not least flagrant breach of faith at the execrable Union, I defy 
him to show me one compact between England and this coun- 
try, that has not been treacherously and basely broken. The 
description of a treaty with the Irish, given by Clarendon, shows 
that the intention, at the momept of entering into them, was to 
delude and betray us. Next, Mr. Dawson says : " A system- 
atic combination against the introduction of the arts and bless- 
ings of peace are (with those qualities he before stated) to be 
found in mournful succession throughout the lapse of centu- 



144 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

lies." Eeally, this is very, very heartrending. They first 
take away our possessions, our rights, our wealth, and every 
incentive to labor and industry, and then one of that very 
faithless and base crew who betrayed us, an underling of a 
minister, is sent to thwart and irritate us — to charge us with 
the effects of theu^ own perfidy, and to remind us of the bless- 
ings we have lost by being the victims of their diabolical 
deceit. 

" During five or six centuries," says Mr. Dawson, "the his- 
tory of Ireland presents not one single fact to claim the admi- 
ration or even the respect of posterity." The blundering bigot 
then, with a classic affectation, asks : " Where can we look for 
one green spot to cheer us in our gloomy pilgrimage ?" Oh, 
hear this Orange bigot asking for a green spot ! I was 
reading at the very time I received the newspaper with Mr. 
Dawson's speech, a passage in a work which has been ever 
and is still looked up to as a high authority on the subject of 
which it treats. It is an account of the injuries and massa- 
cres of the Irish in 1641, by Dr. Curry, and there the occur- 
rence to which I allude is to be found. Many, innumerable 
instances could be drawn from the historians of the times in 
which Mr. Dawson's ignorance delights to revel, not of one 
fact, but of hundreds of facts, calculated to elevate the charac- 
ter of the Catholics of Ireland. Speaking of the county of 
Mayo, the historian says : " In this county few murders were 
committed by either side, though the hbel saith, that about 
two hundred and fifty Protestants were murdered, whereof at 
Belluke two hundi-ed and twenty ; whereas not one person was 
murdered there, which the now Lady of Montrath can witness ; 
her ladyship and Sir Robert Hanna, her father, with many 
otliers, being retreated thither for security, were aU conveyed 
safe to Manor Hamilton. And it is observable that the said 
lady and the rest came to Mr. Owen O'Rorcke's, who kept a 
garrison at Drumaheir, for the Irish, before they cAme to 
Manor Hamilton, whose brothea: was prisoner with Sir Frede- 
rick Hamilton. And the said Mr. O'Rorcke, having so many 
persons of quality in. his hands, sent to Sir Frederick to enlarge 
his brother, and that he would convey them aU safe to him. 
But Sir Frederick, instead of enlarging his brother, hanged 



SPEECH ON THE TEEATY OF LIMEEICK. 145 

liim the next day, wMda miglit have well provoked the gentle- 
man to revenge, if he had not more humanity than could be 
well expected upon such occasions, and in times of so great 
confusion ; yet he sent them all safe when they desired." Yes, 
he sent them all safe when they desired. He did what he 
ought to do, harrowed as his heart must have been at the 
atrocious outrage that had been committed by his rash and 
ferocious enemy. He did what an Irish gentleman did do, 
and does do — he spurned at cruelty. He was not goaded, even 
by the example set him, into an imitation of barbarity. His 
honor stifled his sense of injury. I will give that fact to Mr. 
Dawson, and let him make the most of it, in classic fulmina- 
tions against the Catholics of Ireland. Let Mr. Dawson read 
this fact, and if he persist in aspersing his native land after 
the perusal of it — if he should then impugn the chivalrous gen- 
erosity — the humanity — the virtues of Ireland, I will only say, 
that if Ireland has produced generous hearts and dispositions, 
she has also produced monsters and anomahes, which have 
turned what was intended to be one of the gardens of the 
world into the pitiful pelting province that she is at this 
moment ! 

Mr. Dawson had said that the object of James II. was to 
estabhsh the Cathohc religion both in England and Ireland, 
and with it unlimited despotism. This was a false assertion ; 
he did no more than to proclaim toleration, and this was 
enough for the Dawsons of the day to expel him from the 
throne. The prosecution of the seven bishops I now condemn, 
and if I had lived in the day of the occurrence I would have 
condemned it then. Mr. Dawson says, that in order to effect 
the purpose of estabhshing an unlimited despotism in Ireland, 
James proceeded to remodel the civil estabhshments, and he 
accordingly displaced every Protestant who held an office in 
the administration of justice, and filled up the place of chan- 
cellor, chief judges, puisne judges, privy counsellors, sheriffs, 
magistrates, and even constables, with CathoKcs. Talking of 
constables reminds me of the DubHn corporation ; that im- 
maculate body once petitioned for the removal of Mulvaney, 
the scavenger, from his functions, because he was, contrary to 
law, a Papist ! Oh, what a relentless spirit ! They would not 



146 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

allow a Papist to fill even tlie dirtiest office of the state. It 
is asserted by Mr. Dawson, that all the judges appointed by 
James were intolerant. This is false ; James nominated only 
three judges — Nugent, Lord Eiverston, Sir Stephen Eice, and 
Daly. Would to God all Judge Dalys were like him. He 
never raised himself to the bench by destroying the interests 
of his country. He never devoted his leisure hours to calum- 
niating his ^\Tetched, ragged countrymen ! All three individ- 
uals nominated by James to the bench, were remarkable 
for their XDurity and perfection. They are quoted by Protest- 
ant writers as the models of judicial knowledge and purity. 
It was related of Eice that he gambled his pro^^erty, and this 
was the only blemish that ever sulhed his reputation. They 
lived in troubled times and they survived them. They did not 
fly, as they would have done if they had been guilty of a crime 
or a derehction of duty. They lived honored and respected, 
and they descended to theu- graves without taint or reproach, 
having served their King well, and I trust having served their 
God better. Oh ! it is only Orange bigotry that could ransack 
the very graves to find materials of insult ; but in this instance, 
as in every other, it has failed, and I defy it to the proof. 
Mr. Dawson had alleged it as a charge, that it was enacted by 
James that three fellows of the University were prohibited 
from meeting together. Even if it were so, how did the enact- 
ment differ from the enactments usual in all cases of civil 
commotion. What was this act intended to prevent but a 
Protestant insurrection ? Flagrante bello, it is provided that 
there shall be no meetings of persons who might conspire to 
cause a j)ubHc tumult, and this which is now practiced — ^nay, 
which is carried to an unparalleled extent in Ireland under 
the present government, is charged as a crime upon James. 
But it should not be forgotten that by the repeal of that act 
of settlement, the monarch himseK was a sufferer to an im- 
mense amount. The passing of that act, however, might not 
be justified, but decidedly any act that would tend to subvert 
it would be unjust. Transfers and conveyances had been 
made to such an extent, that it would be an unjustifiable crime 
to disturb them. I have been accused of recommending the 
repeal of the act of settlement, and I dare say I wiU now be 



SPEECH ON THE TEEATY OP LIMEEICK. 147 

accused of recommending it. But as a proof of my sincerity 
in defending it, I will say that if that act were annulled I 
would be comparatively a beggar. My property hangs upon 
its continuance. The property of my two brothers, who are 
both independent, hangs upon the same title. What then 
have I to gain by a change ? Mr. Dawson had complained 
of the attainder of two thousand six hundred Protestants by 
James. But what was there in that, worthy of reprobation ? 
Those attainted men had fled the country ; they were told that 
if they did not come back within a certain period they would be 
attainted. They did not return and they were attainted ! Why 
should they not ? They were attainted because they were 
enemies of the King ; and if they were not enemies of the 
King, they were base cowards, for they ran away when their 
country needed their assistance in its cause. In Athens it was 
the law that every man who was neutral was criminal — " He 
who is not for us is against us." And shall it be said that those 
who fled from their country when she needed their energies on 
her behalf, were not deserving of obloquy and punishment ? 

Mr. Dawson had said that the parhament of James was 
Cathohc. I admit the fact. But let Mr. Dawson show me 
any act of their doing that can shake their purity and hon- 
esty ! Let him show me an act even proposed for the purpose 
of oppressing the consciences of Protestants ! No, the parha- 
ment of that day sat in friendship with a few Protestants, and 
theu' BiU of Bights was more extensive even than that of Eng- 
land. Even after the excesses and cruelties that had been com- 
mitted against the Catholics, when they were deprived of 
power, and when they regained it, was there a system of blood 
and cruelty or their part, although they had the dominion if 
they used it ? Under Mary the Catholics of Ireland were not 
persecutors, and again under James they wielded their power 
in mercy and toleration. They forgot the persecutions which 
theii- body endured under Ehzabeth, and they only bore in 
recollection the character of their religion, which taught them 
to give charity and good-wiU for persecution and cruelty. Mr. 
Dawson had said that King James had taken away their 
churches from the Protestants. This assertion, as well as the 
other assertion, made by that profound statesman, was false. 



148 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

This statement was derived from tlie pui-e pages of Arclibishop 
King's work. The cathedral of Christ's Church in Dublin was 
the King's chapel, and it was in that case alone that James 
exercised liis. authority, and in dispossessing the holders of 
that cathedral he acted under his royal right and was not in- 
fluenced by his rehgious feelings. The contrary was the fact 
with regard to Wexford. In that county the Cathohc soldiery 
had taken possession of a Protestant church, and when James 
heard the circumstances he ejected the soldiery and restored 
the church to its owners. Doctor Leslie, a learned divine of 
the Protestant Church, had challenged the accuracy of King's 
book, and had denounced and refuted it, and now, after such 
a lapse of years, Mr. Peel sends out his underling, Mr. Daw- 
son, his clerk, to rei3eat the calumnies. "Who was this King ? 
He was a vile parasite of James ? He was the ecclesiastic 
who prayed from his pulpit, that God might blast him if he 
ever preached any other doctrine than passive obedience, and 
at another time, that God might blast and destroy William 
and his consort, if they had any intention of invading this 
country ! He — he is the vile toad-eater, who has denounced 
the monarch whose feet he kissed ! Dopping, who preached 
up that there was no faith to be kept with the Cathohcs of 
Limerick, was the first to present an address to King James 
on his landing. What an exquisite pair of defenders of the 
violation of the treaty of Limerick ! What immaculate au- 
thority for Mr. Dawson to quote fi-om ! Is it to be endured 
that Peel, who knows nothing of the history of these times, or 
the history of our country, is to send out one of his clerks to 
blow up, with his pestiferous breath, the embers of those un- 
holy fires of bigotry which had been nearly extinguished by 
the sux^erincumbent infiuence of liberaHty and good fellow- 
ship, and to excite, by his evil agency, the inflammable ma- 
terials of Irish society ? Before I conclude, I will read an 
extract from a work written by Mr. Storey, a chaplain in the 
army of King Wilham, who is a tolerably good authority on 
the bravery of the Irish troops, which Mr. Dawson has re- 
pudiated : 

Wednesday, tlie 24th. A breach being made near St. John's Gate, 
over the Black Battery, that was about twelve yards long, and pretty flat, 



SPEECH ON THE TKEATY OF LIMERICK. 149 

as it appeared to us, the King gave orders tliat the counterscarp should 
be attacked that afternoon, to which purpose a great many woolsacks 
were carried down, and good store of ammunition, with other things 
suitable for such work. All the grenadiers in the army were ordered to 
march down into the trenches, which they did. Those, being about 
five hundred, were commanded, each company, by their respective cap- 
tains, and were to make the first attack, being supported by one bat- 
talion of the Blue Dutch on the right, then Lieutenant Douglass's regi- 
ment, Brigadier Stuart's, my Lord Meath's, and my Lord Lisburn's, as 
also a Brandenburg regiment. These were all posted towards the breach, 
upon the left of whom were Col. Cutts and the Danes, Lieutenant 
General Douglass commanded, and their orders were to possess them- 
selves of the counterscarp and maintain it. "We had also a body of horse 
drawn up to succor the foot upon occasion. About half an hour after 
three, the signal being given by firing three pieces of cannon, the grena- 
diers, being in the furthest angle of our trenches, leaped over and ran 
towards the counterscarp, firing their pieces and throwing their grenades. 
This gave the alarm to the Irish, who had their guns all ready, and 
discharged great and small shot upon us as fast as 'twas possible. Our 
men were not behind them in either, so that in less than two minutes, 
the noise was so terrible that one would have thought the very skies 
were ready to rend in sunder. This was seconded by dust, smoke, and 
all the terrors that the art of man could invent to ruin and undo one 
another ; and to make it the more uneasy, the day itself was exces- 
sively hot to the bystanders, and much more sore, in all respects, to 
those upon action. Captain Carlisle, of my Lord Drogheda's regiment, 
ran in with his grenadiers to the counterscarp, and though he received 
two wounds between that and the trenches, yet he went forward and 
commanded his men to throw in the grenades, but in the leaping into 
the dry ditch below the counterscarp, an Irishman below shot him dead. 
Lieutenant Burton, however, encouraged the men, and they got upon 
the counterscarp, and all the rest of the grenadiers were as ready as 
they. By this time the Irishmen were throwing down their arms and 
running as fast as they could into town, which, our men perceiving, 
entered the breach, pell-mell, with them, and half the Earl of Drogheda's 
grenadiers and some others were actually in town. The regiments that 
were to second the grenadiers went to the counterscarp, and, having no 
order to proceed, they stoj)t." [I engage they did, they stopt sure 
enough.] " The Irishmen were all running from the walls, and quite over 
the bridge into the English town ; but seeing but a few of our men 
enter, they were with much ado pei'suaded to rally, and those that were 
in seeing themselves not followed, and their ammunition being spent, 
they designed to retreat, but some were shot, some taken, and the rest 
came out again, but very few without being wounded. The Irish then 
ventured upon the breach again, and from the walls and every place so 
pestered us upon the counterscarp, that, after nigh three hours resist- 



150 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL o'CONNELL. 

ing bullets, stones, broken bottles, from the very women, wlio boldly 
stood in the breach and Avere nearer our men than then* own, " 

And liere I will -paj a tribute to the heroic virtues of these 
women, who thus sacrificed themselves for their country's 
honor. An oJEficer of the Iiish army was wounded. The 
instance is one of singular interest, arising from female courage 
and presence of mind. He was wounded, and was flying into 
his own house, and was pursued by an enemy. He had gained 
his door, and his Avife, from a window in the house, was a wit- 
ness of his efforts to escape from his relentless pursuer. The 
window-stone was loose, and it was a ready instrument for her 
purpose. Her husband was nearly a victim to the revenge of 
his foe, who had just stepped upon the threshold, when the im- 
pulse of the mind of the fond and courageous woman gave a 
strength and energy to her efforts, — she hurled the stone upon 
the ruffian's head, and he bit the dust. Oh, what splendid de- 
votion to country ! Would there have been an Irish heart 
among the Irish, if they did not beat out their invaders, stim- 
ulated as they were, by such heartcheering examples. 

[Mr. O'Connell resumed the reading.] 

" whatever ways could be thought on to destroy us, our ammunition 

being spent, it was judged safest to return to our trenches. When the 
work was at the hottest, the Brandenburg regiment, who behaved them- 
selves very well, had got upon the Black Battery, when the enemy's 
powder happened to take fire, and blew up a great many of them, the 
men, fagots, and stones, and what not, flying into the air with a most 
terrible noise. Colonel Cutts was commanded by the Dulie of Wurtem- 
burg, to march towards the spur at the south gate, ancl beat in the Irish 
that appeared there, which he did, though he lost several of his men, 
and was himself wounded ; he went within half musket shot of the gate, 
and all his men were open to the enemy's fire, who lay secure within the 
walls. The Danes were not idle all the while, but fired upon the enemy 
with all imaginable fury, and had several killed, but the mischief was, 
we had but one breach, and all towards the left, it was impossible to get 
into the town when the gates were shut, if there had been no enemy to 
oppose us, without a great many scaling ladders, which we had not. 
From half an hoiu- after three till after seven, there was one continued 
fire of grape and small shot without any intermission ; insomuch that 
the smoke that went from the town reached in one continued cloud to 
the top of a mountain at least six miles off. When our men drew off, 
some were brought up dead, and some without a leg, others wanted 



SPEECH ON THE TEEATY OF LIMEEICK. 151 

arms, and some were blind with powder, especially a great many of the 
poor Brandenburghers looked hke furies, with the misfortune of gun- 
powder. One Mr. Upton, getting in amongst the Irish in town, and 
seeing no way to escape, went in the crowd undiscovered, till he came at 
the Governor, and then surrendered himself. There was a captain, one 
Bedloe, who deserted the enemy the day before, and now went upon the 
breach, and fought bravely on our side, for which his Majesty gave him 
a company. The King stood nigh OromweU's fort aU the time, and the 
business being over, he went to his camp very much concerned, as in- 
deed was the whole army ; for you might have seen a mixture of anger 
and sorrow in everybody's countenance. The Irish had two small field 
pieces planted in the King's Island, which flanked their own counter- 
scarp, and in our attack, did us no smaU damage, as did also two guns 
more that they had planted within the town, opposite the breach, and 
charged with cartridge shot. We lost at least five hundred upon the 
spot, and had a thousand more wounded, as I understood by the sur- 
geons of our hospitals, who are the properest judges. The Irish lost a 
great many by cannon and other ways ; but it cannot be supposed that 
their loss should be equal to ours, since it is a much easier thing to de- 
fend walls, than 'tis by main strength to force people from them ; and 
one man within, has the advantage of four without." 

[Here followed a list of officers killed and wounded, needless to 
be recounted.] 

Are we after this to be told by Dawson that our country- 
men were not brave, and would not succeed, if they had held 
out? In a base violation of the treaty, which had been 
signed before the walls of Limerick, the privileges and immu- 
nities promised, were denied, — the treaty was broken — it 
stands a record of British perfidy ! Our ancestors, sir, for I, 
too, may say that blood runs even in my veins from those 
who fought before Limerick, are denied, their rights ! Your 
noble brother, degraded from his natural rank, is unrepresent- 
ed and uurepresenting. He neither has a vote in the election 
of his own order, nor the voice of a Forty-shilling Free- 
holder in returning a member to the Commons' House of 
Parhament. Where is the hberty the Cathohcs enjoyed un- 
der Charles I., which was secured to them by the treaty of 
Limerick? TeU me that, Mr. Dawson. Tell me that, Orange 
faction. Let Mr. Peel bring his borough members, who 
come in when the division bell is rung, to assert facts contrary 
to reason and religion against us ; but let them not insult us 



152 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL o'CONNELL. 

by saying that the treaty of Limerick has not been foully vio- 
lated. 

There is another trait of Mr. Dawson's hypocrisy that is 
worth mentioning. After my examination before the Parlia- 
mentary Committee, Mr. Dawson came up to me, and told me, 
in the weakness of his heart, that my evidence had removed 
many prejudices from him, and that his opinions on many 
subjects were altered. I rejoiced at the declaration, and I 
respected him for making it at the time. I mentioned in pub- 
he the fact, and stated that Mr. Dawson had shaken hands 
with me in the interview, and this part of the relation it was 
deemed necessary to contradict in the Dublin Evening Mail. 
I do not know whether he shook hands with me or not. I 
hope now he did not. I would shrink from any contact with 
a man w^ho could make such a declaration to me as he did, 
and since falsify it by his acts. 

I have done — I have shown that the treaty of Limerick 
was foully violated. I arraign those who perpetuate the vio- 
lation by their hostility to us, and to om^ cause. I arraign 
their bigotry in the face of the world ; and I demand in the 
name of humanity and justice and faith, that at least the 
terms of the compact should be fulfilled. 



SPEECH AT THE BAR OF THE HOUSE OF COM^ 
MONS, TO MAINTAIN HIS BIGHT TO SIT AS 
MEMBER FOR -CLARE. 



I CANNOT, su', help feeling some apprehension when I state 
that I am very ignorant of the forms of this House, and there- 
fore that I shall reqube much indulgence from you, if, in what 
I am about to say, I should happen, by anything that may fall 
from me, to violate them. I claim my right to sit and vote in 
the House, as the representative for the county of Clare, 
without taking the Oath of Supremacy. I am ready to take 
the Oath of Allegiance, provided by the recent statute, which 



l^lf., ,'.: ,li<l:.,\l 




O'CONNELL REFUSING TO TAKE THE OATH. 



CLAIMING A SEAT IN PAELIAMENT. -153 

was passed for the relief of his Majesty's Boman Catholic sub- 
jects. My desire is to have that oath administered to me, 
and of course I must be prepared to show that I am quaUfied 
in point of property ; and whether the House thinks I can 
take the new oath or not, if I am required to take both, I am 
wilhng, at my own hazard, to sit and vote in the House. My 
right is in its own nature complete. I have been returned as 
duly elected by the proper officers. It appears by that return, 
that I have a great majority of the county of Clare, who voted 
for my return. That return has since been discussed in a 
committee of this House, and has been confirmed by the 
unanimous decision of that committee. I have as much right 
to sit and vote in this House, according to the principles of 
the constitution, as any of the honorable or' right honorable 
gentlemen by whom I am surrounded. I am a representative 
of the people, and on their election I claim the right of exer- 
cising power with which their election has invested me. That 
question cannot arise at common law ; it must depend only on 
the statute, whether a representative of the people is bound, 
before he discharges his duty to his constituents, to take an 
oath of any description. Ux3 to the reign of Elizabeth, I be- 
heve I am correct in saying that no such oath existed. Up to 
the close of the reign of Charles II., no oath was taken within 
the House ; the 30th Charles II. was the first statute requir- 
ing any oath to be taken within the House itself. The Oath 
of Allegiance (and no man is more ready to take the Oath of 
Allegiance than I am), the Oath of Supremacy (and there 
were very few in Parliament at that time who would not take 
it), and the Declaration, were for the first time introduced by 
that statute ; and it not only required them to be taken and 
subscribed, but it went on to provide remedies against individ- 
uals who should neglect or refuse to take and subscribe them. 
Among those remedies, some of which were of an exceedingly 
extensive, and I may almost call them of an unlawful nature, 
was a pecuniary penalty of five hundred pounds ; which I 
mention because I shall again call the attention of the House 
to it, before I close what I have to offer to its consideration. 
The purpose of that statute was obvious ; it was stated to be 
" for the mode of serving the Ring's person and government," 



154 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

and tlie mode of attaining tliat object was disabling Papists 
from sitting in either House of Parliament. I am, in the dis- 
courteous language of the act, a Papist — I come within 
their description. I cannot take the oath prescribed, and 
shall shrink from signing the Declaration. The object of the 
statute is sufficiently clear from its title, and the construction 
of the statute must follow from that title. Therefore it is per- 
fectly evident that as long as this act remained in force, it 
would have been vain for the people to elect me for any 
county or borough, as I could not exercise the right vested in 
me. The law declares expressly, that, a refusal to take the 
oath shall be followed by the vacating of the seat, and the 
issue of a new writ. 

Up to the period of the Legislative Union with Ireland, this 
statute, by means of other acts, was enforced, that is, it was 
partially enforced ; the Declaration was enforced, and I find, 
by reference to the statute, which I took out of the library of 
this House, that, as to the oaths, they were repealed by 1st 
Yv^iUiam and Mary, section 1, chapter 1. That act altered the 
form of the Oath of Supremacy; therefore, it was an oath 
asserting affirmatively that the supremacy in spiritual matters 
was in the crown, but that act negatives the foreign suprema- 
cy or spiritual jurisdiction. So stood the statute law until the 
period of the Legislative Union with Ireland. At that pe- 
riod, in my humble opinion, an alteration took place in the 
effect of the statute law. I respectfully submit, that at that 
period this alteration took place in the law — that whereas, by 
this statute of Charles II., and by that of 1st WiUiam and 
Mary, pains, penalties and disabilities were enacted against 
any man for sitting and voting without having taken the 
oaths, the direction of the act of Union was, that every man 
should take the oaths, but it imposed no pains, penalties or 
disabilities. I submit that the statute of Charles the Second 
could not operate upon this parhament ; that it was an act of 
the English parhament; even a statute passed after the 
union with Scotland, could not operate ; nothing can operate 
in this parliament but a Union statute, or a statute subse- 
quent to the Union. This seems to me a perfectly plain propo- 
sition, such as no lawyer can controvert, and such as no judge 



CLAIMING A SEAT IN PAELIAMENT. 155 

could possibly overrule. First, tlien, I claim to sit and vote 
without taking the oaths, by virtue of the Union Act. Sec- 
ondly, I claim under the Rehef Bill to sit and vote without 
subscribing the Declaration. Thirdly, I claim under the Re- 
lief Bill to sit and vote without taking the Oath of Supre- 
macy : and, fourthly, I claim, under the positive enactments 
of the Relief Bill, to sit and vote without taking any other 
oath than that mentioned in the Relief BiU itself. I will en- 
deavor to go through these four topics as briefly as pos- 
sible. 

The Union Act, as I before remarked, certainly directed 
the oaths to be taken, but with equal certainty it did not an- 
nex pains or penalties in not taking them. It did, however, 
direct them to be taken, and it is for the House to determine 
whether it has authority to prevent any man from exercising 
the right of representation without taking those oaths. I do 
not mean to canvass that point at great length : I do not 
mean to concede it, because I cannot ; I state that there are 
precedents passed svb silentio, where gentlemen after the Union 
having neglected to take the oaths, private acts were brought 
in for their rehef. But I put it to the House in its judicial 
capacity ; and, having put it, I shall have it at once, whether 
the Union Act, not having given the power of depriving a rep- 
resentative of his right to sit and vote, the House could do it 
of its own authority, without the warrant of an express law. 
I would respectfully remind honorable members that this oath 
is a species of disherison of the pubhc at large ; I would 
remind them also, that those thus rendered inehgible are ren- 
dered inehgible for no other reason than the conscientious 
respect to the sacred obHgation of an oath. It excludes a 
meritorious class, and admits all who neglect or disregard the 
sanction to which I have referred ; it calls upon the people to 
elect the careless., the fearless, the mendacious, and it proceeds 
upon the bad principle of making a selection of the vicious to 
the exclusion of the conscientious. That being the spirit and 
principle of the law, I humbly submit to the House whether 
it would carry that spirit and principle into specific execution. 
I think if I stood on the Act of Union alone, I should stand 
firmly in this assembly of Christians and gentlemen, calling 



156 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

upon them not to give effect to that \icious principle — not to 
encoui-age 

"The strong antipathy of bad to good ;" 

not to promote the choice of such as are hostile to those who 
reverence the sacred obligation of an oath, but to throw open 
the doors as wide as possible to aU who will- illustrate this 
assembly by their virtues and their talents. I quit that 
point and come to the next, to which I revert with pleasure, 
I found it on the Belief BiU. 

I insist that the effect of this Eehef Bill is to do away with the 
direction of the Union Act, as far as it relates to oaths. I wiU 
canvass that proposition first. The Union Act directed that 
these oaths should be taken for a particular period, and for a 
particular period only. The direction is, "And every member 
of the House of Commons in the United Kingdom, in the first 
and all succeeding parliaments, shall, until the Parliament of 
the United Kingdom shall other-wise provide, take the oaths," 
etc. I contend that this direction is at an end — upon this 
direction depends the Oath of Supremacy, and my argument is 
that the period is arrived. The statute uses the adverb " un- 
til " — the provision was merely temporary and the period has 
expired. The Act of Union provides that certain oaths shall 
be taken until something shall happen. Has that happened? 
That is the only question. Let me see whether I can give an 
answer to the question. I say it has : that is my assertion, 
and how do I prove it ? I take up the statute and I find — 
what ? that the Declaration is forever abolished. Has not the 
House, in the words of the Act of Union, " otherwise provided ?" 
This is a penal and restrictive act : it is restrictive of the peo- 
ple's right. I take up the statute and I see that the Parha- 
ment has otherwise pro-^ided — not for CathoHcs alone — not 
for Protestants alone ; but for Catholics, Dissenters, and Pro- 
testants — all without hmitation or restriction. That the pe- 
riod has arrived, I have distinct evidence in what happened to 
myself at the table. The oaths then tendered to me were dif- 
ferent from those which would have been tendered before the 
13th of April ; the document produced was new : it was fresh 
for the occasion ; it was a novel introduction into the House. 



CLAIMING A SEAT IN PARLIAMENT. 157 

On one side were the oaths for Protestants, and on the other 
those for the CathoHcs : and why was this ? Because the 
Legislature has "otherwise provided" than at the date of 
Union. As one of the representatives of the people, I claim 
the benefit of the provision : I claim to come not within any 
of the oaths. If the new provision has not embraced every 
case, it is either the wisdom or defect of the act ; but either 
in one case or in the other, the time contemplated has come, 
and I claim my right just as if the Union statute did not ex- 
ist. But suppose that what I have said has not convinced 
the House, let me call its attention to the bill, and remind the 
House that in construing it, there are general principles of 
common sense to enable us to decide on the construction of a 
statute, as well as any bench of judges to decide on any intri- 
cate point of law. 

Previously to the Union and to the passing of the act of 
30 Charles II., the object of the Legislature was to prevent 
Papists from sitting and voting in parhament, and any deci- 
sion of the House upon that statute must be a decision ancil- 
lary to that object. The object of the statute of Charles was 
to exclude Papists ; but here is now before me a statute whose 
object is to open the doors to the Eoman Cathohcs, and to 
annihilate the bar that has hitherto impeded their progress. 
First, I say, that this Relief Bill, like many others, sometimes 
takes up a portion of the subject in the middle — then it goes 
at once to the commencement, and again reverts to some other 
part of the subject : at all events it is not so methodical in its 
construction as to enable me to give at once an analysis of its 
contents. The second section provides for the case of all 
Eoman Catholics being peers, and it enables them to sit and 
vote on taking the new oaths. It applies as well to the peers 
created in the period that intervened between the statute of 
Charles II. and the present day, as to those peers whose titles 
and rights existed prior to that statute ; of these there were two 
who were deprived, I may now say, because it has been admitted 
in the Legislature, by an unjust attainder — Lord Kenmare and 
Lord Baron Pfrench. They were created peers during the period 
when it was impossible for either of them to exercise the right 
of the peerage by sitting and voting in parliament. This act 



158 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

lias admitted them to tliose rights. As the prerogative of the 
Crown has been restored to its full effect by means of this stat- 
ute, so the right of representation has been made an equal 
right : as the royal prerogative has been perfectly successful, 
the privilege of the people ought to be equally potential. 
There are, however, these words in the second section : " or 
who shall after the commencement of the act be returned as 
a member of the House of Commons to sit and vote in either 
House of Parliament respectively." After the passing of the 
act everybody is to be entitled to the benefit ; and I beg the 
House to reflect that if I be not by the second section included, 
I am not excluded by it ; though it does not affirmatively estab- 
lish my right, it does not negative it by any enactment ; it may 
not be sufficient to admit me, but there is nothing to shut me 
oat. One point alone includes me, and it is a point of legal 
construction, depending on the authority of cases which I 
shall not now analyze. I might do so as a lawyer, were I ad- 
dressing a bench of judges, but before a popular assembly, I 
ought not to occupy time in any such attempt. I only allude 
to them in order that if a court should hereafter decide that 
my argument is valid, it would impose upon me the necessity 
of taking no oaths at all, or else protect me against the exac- 
tion of the penalty. 

The construction which a lawyer may put upon the statute, 
I apprehend, would be, that he who was returned before the 
passing of the act, was embraced within its provisions ; and 
the House will give me leave just to mention that it has lately 
been solemnly decided in the case of a will, that notwithstand- 
ing the pecuhar wording of it, children bom after the date of 
the instrument, were included in its provisions. I will only 
remind the House of these technical rules, which I trust will 
never be carried into effect at the expense of any whom I am 
addressing. I repeat, that if the second section does not 
include, it does not exclude me. It may be said that it was 
framed for other objects — to let in persons who have claims 
hke those of the Earl of Surrey ; and here let me claim the 
assistance of the legal gentlemen in the House. Beyond a 
doubt — and I call their particular attention to the fact — ^if the 
second section does not aid me, it cannot possibly injure my 



CLAIMING A SEAT IN PARLIAMENT. 159 

right to sit and vote. I come then at once to the right — I 
come to it under the tenth section of the act ; and I implore 
yon to forgive me for trespassing so long upon other matters, 
when I have this section before me, which seems to render 
doubt impossible. 

"And be it enacted, that it shall be lawful for any of Ms Majesty's 
subjects professing the Eoman Catliolic religion, to hold, exercise, and 
enjoy all civil and military offices and places of trust and profit under 
his Majesty, his heu's or successors, and to exercise any other franchise 
or civU right, except as hereinafter excepted, upon taking and sub- 
scribing at the times and in the manner hereinafter mentioned, the oath 
hereinbefore appointed and set forth, instead of the oaths of allegiance, su- 
premacy, and abjuration, and instead of such other oath or oaths as are, 
or may be, now by law required to be taken for the purpose aforesaid, 
by any of his Majesty's subjects professing the Eoman CathoHc rehgion." 

I claim the benefit of that section ; it is plain and distinct, 
and includes no technical subtleties; there is nothing to 
throw a cloud over its clearness, and having read it, I might 
stand upon that alone. If then I touch upon other matters, 
it is only because, not having the right of reply, it is necessary 
for me to endeavor to anticipate. If, in my anxiety to remove 
all objections and obstacles, I attribute to honorable members 
weak arguments they would not have used, and which they 
may gravely disclaim, I hope I shall be forgiven. This sec- 
tion introduces the franchise ; in common parlance, indeed, 
the fi-anchise was introduced before, because the fifth section 
provides that Boman Catholics shall vote at all elections of 
cities, counties, and towns ; and it provides a new oath to be 
taken. Therefore as far as franchise can mean the elective 
franchise, the act is so intentionally extensive, that it uses the 
word unnecessarily, perhaps, again. Nay, more, the franchise 
connected with corporations is actually mentioned again in 
the fourth section ; thus in the fifth section it means one spe- 
cies of franchise, in the tenth section another, and in the four- 
teenth a third. For fear any franchise should be omitted 
and forgotten, lest any party should by chance be excluded 
from the benefits, which I hope and trust wiU flow from the 
act, the word franchise is to be found in three different parts 
of it. It then goes on to give aU civil rights, excepting such 



IGO SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL o'CONNELL. 

as are hereinafter mentioned. The first question is, whether 
the right of sitting and voting in parhament be hereinafter 
excepted ? I meet that with a direct negative — it is not ; but 
there are offices excepted in the twelfth section, such as guar- 
dians and justices of the United Kingdom, the Eegent of the 
United Kingdom, Lord High Cliancellor, Lord Keeper, Lord 
Lieutenant of L-eland, and High Commissioner to the General 
Assembly of the Chm'cli of Scotland. In the fifteenth section 
also, the civil rights are excepted, which might be exercised 
for ecclesiastical promotion, and for presentation to livings in 
the gift of corporations. These do not include the right for 
which I contend, and I shall not detain the House bj going 
through the act more minutely. I have read it attentively, 
and I can assert that I find in it no such exception. I shall 
be asked, perhaps, whether the right to sit and vote be a civil 
right? And I would reply, if I were permitted to do so, by 
asking another question — if it be not a civil right, what is 
it ? I have looked into law books with a view to this ques- 
tion of civil right, and I find that Mr. Justice Blackstone, in 
his Commentaries, has divided the whole law into rights and 
wrongs. On the front of his book is found the very right to 
sit and vote in parliament. But I appeal to common sense 
and common understanding, is it not a civil right ? Must it 
not be a civil right ? In the section itself I find civil contra- 
distinguished from military — that Eoman Catholics may " en- 
joy all civil and military offices." The section itself, therefore, 
explains the meaning of the term. But, travelling out of the 
section, and resorting to those who have best defined the mean- 
ing of the words in the Enghsh language, what do we find ? 
Dr. Johnson tells us that " civil " is an adjective which means 
" relating to the community," " poHtical : relating to the city 
or government." Now, " political " and " civil " must, by the 
by, mean the same thing ; the only difference being that one 
word is from the Greek, and the other from the Latin. They 
are synonymous and identical, and no man can deny that sit- 
ting and voting is both a political and civil right. 

The example given by Spratt fully supports this assertion — 
"but there is another unity which would be most advanta- 
geous to our country, and that is your endeavor, a civil politi- 
cal union in the whole nation." 



CLAIMING A SEAT IN PARLIAMENT. 161 

The definition and description necessarily include tlie 
right I claim ; but let us see what is the definition of that 
word " right." After giving other significations, Dr. Johnson 
proceeds to the third sense of "right," which is " claim," and 
he follows it by others, such as : " that which justly be- 
longs to one," — "property, interest," — "power, prerogative," 
— " immunity, privilege," — in short, there is not one of these 
significations that is more comprehensive than I desire it to 
be. He inserts the following example of Sir Walter Raleigh, 
of "just claim." "The Boman Catholic citizens were, by the 
sword, taught to acknowledge the Pope their Lord, though 
they knew not by what right," This is a plain definition and 
description of civil right. It cannot mean " franchise," because 
franchisement has abeady been included — it cannot mean 
" property," because property is included in the twenty- third 
section of the act, which requires no oath at all for enjoyment 
of it : — from and after the passage of this act, no oath or 
oaths shall , be tendered to, or required to be taken by, his 
Majesty's subjects professing the Roman Catholic religion, for 
enabling them to hold or enjoy any real or personal property." 
Thus, then, " civil right," in this act, does not mean proper- 
ty ; it does not mean franchise, but it means, a just claim, a 
political privilege, an immunity of any kind whatever. Com- 
mon sense here shows what the law sanctions — that by civil 
right, necessarily must be included the right to sit and vote. 
Another observation is, that this section relates to the time 
and manner of taking the oaths ; but suppose I were to concede 
that no time and manner are expressed, yet the civil right 
being granted under the oaths directed, and the time and man- 
ner being the only condition, necessarily would supply the 
condition. We have in the nineteenth section the mode of 
taking the oaths for corporate offices, and in the twentieth, the 
time and manner of taking the oaths for their offices ; but I 
will not detain the House upon that point, because in the 
twenty-third section the Legislature has wisely provided for 
the case. It declares : 

"Tliat tlie oath herein appointed to be taken and subscribed in any of 
the courts, or before any of the persons above-mentioned, shall be of 
the same force and effect, to all intents and purposes as, and shall stand 



162 SELECT SrEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

in the place of, all oaths and declarations, required and prescribed bj 
any law now in force for the relief of his Majesty's Eoman Catholic 
subjects from any disabilities, incapacities, or penalties. " 

However, as there is no punctuation in acts of parliament, I 
shall not trouble the House with any special pleading on par- 
ticular words, but come to the remaining and distinct portion 
of the section : 

"And the proper officer of any of the courts above mentioned, in 
which any j)ersons professing the Eoman Catholic rehgion, shall demand 
to take and subscribe the oaths herein appointed and set forth, is hereby 
authorized and required to administer the oath to such iDerson : and such 
officer shall make, sign, and deliver a certificate of such oath having 
been duly taken and subscribed. ' 

There is the time, and that time is when it is demanded. 
The courts are also specified, viz., the King's Bench, Com- 
mon Pleas, Exchequer, and Chancery. The time is as univer- 
sal as the benefit of the statute was intended to be, and every- 
thing is complete to my purpose. The objection vanishes, 
because the time is as extensive as can be demanded. I have 
taken that oath in one of the courts named. I am ready to 
prove it. I produced the certificate at the table ; and having 
taken that oath, and produced that certificate, I turn round 
and ask, why am I not allowed to exercise my rights ? Let it 
be remembered that my case cannot be drawn into precedent ; 
it can never occur again ; and I ask the House, in construing 
the act, whether it intends to make it an outlawry against a 
single individual. If the act were meant to meet my case, 
why was not my case specified in it ? It existed when the 
act was passed : it was upon the records of the House, for a 
committee had sat while the bill was pending, and had given 
in its report upon oath. Why, I ask again, was not my case 
specified ? Because it was not intended to be included ? 
Where, then, is the individual who would think it ought to be 
included ? Let me caU the attention of the House to the re- 
cital of the statute. 

" Whereas, by various acts of parliament, certain restraints and disa- 
bilities are imposed on the Eoman Catholic subjects of his Majesty, to 
which other of his Majesty's subjects are not liable, . . . . " 



CLAIMING A. SEAT IN PARLIAMENT. 163 

It includes all restraints and disabilities affecting Koman 
Catliolics ; and proceeds — 

" And whereas it is expedient that such restraints and disabihties shall 
be henceforth discontinued ; and whereas by various acts, certain oaths 
and certain declarations, etc., are or may be required to be taken, made, 
and subscribed by the subjects of his Majesty, as qualifications for sitting 
and voting in parliament, and for the enjoyment of certain offices, fran- 
chises, and civil rights ; Be it enacted, etc., that such restraints and dis- 
abilities shall be from henceforth discontinued." 

All are to be discontinued. "What do I claim ? That they 
shall be discontinued. It is a maxim of law that the recital of 
statute shall not control the enactments ; but with this qualifi- 
cation, that although a particular recital cannot control a gen- 
eral enactment, there is no rule of law that a general recital 
sliaU not explain a particular enactment. But I have a gen- 
eral recital, and a general enactment too, in my favor. 

If to sit and vote be not a civil right, what civil right was 
intended by the word, for every other is provided for ? Why 
should this be excluded ? Look at the recital and look at the 
intention of the statute, and shall I then be told that a doubt 
can arise as to the right to sit and vote ? If I have not that right, 
what is to be done ? Is the statute of Charles II., enabling 
the House to exclude me, still in force ? What is to become 
of me ? Am I to remain the representative for Clare ? Will 
the House not let me in, and is not able to turn me out ? 
What, I ask again, is to become of me? The statute of 
Charles II. imposed penalties for not taking the oaths and 
signing the declaration : among others there was a pecuniary 
penalty, and it continued in force until the union with Ireland. 
The first question I would ask the lawyers of the House then 
is this : Did the Union Act continue those penalties ? I take 
upon me to say it did not. Then, I ask, can any penalty or 
punishment be continued on a free-born British subject, 
when an Act of ParHament, like that of the Union, is silent, 
and contains no enactment as to penalty ? That is a question 
of constitutional law ; and if I were sued to-morrow for the 
penalty of five hundred pounds, I should, of course, instantly 
demur. If I am right in that position — ^if the penalty of five 
hundred pounds could not be recovered, shall the greater inflic- 



164 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL o'CONNELL. 

tion remain ? When courts of justice would refuse to enforce 
the fine, shall this House take the law into its own hands and 
deprive me of what ought to be more precious — the right to 
sit and vote as the representative of a di-\dded, a disinherited, 
and, I had almost said, a martyred people. 

The Union statute, I apprehend, would alone be sufficient ; 
but I do not stand on that merely. This Belief Bill has abol- 
ished the oaths and Declaration, and abolished with it the pun- 
ishment for not taking the one and subscribing the other. If 
the Declaration be abohshed, does the pecuniary penalty re- 
main ? I answer, no. And if the pecuniary penalty do not 
remain, does the heavier penalty of exclusion continue ? Cer- 
tainly not ; and I respectfully submit to the House that it has 
not now jurisdiction to j)i'event the exercise of my ci\'il right 
of sitting and voting here. I acknowledge that I should take 
the oath x^rescribed by the Belief Bill ; and then let any indi- 
vidual, by favor of justice, bring an action against me, and if 
the court should determine that I ought to pay the penalty of 
X500, my exclusion follows as a matter of course. The House 
should consider that this is a large and comprehensive enact- 
ment ; and I ask why the House should interfere in my case, 
and not leave it to the courts of justice ? I do not want this 
House to yield its privileges to the decision of any court or 
tribunal in existence ; but I wish to show that the House, by 
deciding with me, could not preclude anybody fi'om tiying the 
question legally. It is to put my case into that transfer of 
decision that I am arguing here : that is the utmost I strug- 
gle for. The question is : Is it not my right on this return to 
take the seat to which I have been duly elected by the people? 
Is the question fi-ee from doubt ? If there be a doubt, I am 
entitled to the benefit of that doubt. 

I maintain that I have a constitutional right, founded on 
the return of the sheriff and the voice of the people ; and if 
there be a doubt on the subject it should be removed. The 
statute comes before us to be construed fi'om the first clause. 
I did — and I am not ashamed to own it — I did defer to the 
opinion of others, and was averse to calling for that construc- 
tion ; and if it had not been for the interest of those who sent 
me here, my own right should have been buried in oblivion. 



SPEECH AT THE SECOND CLARE ELECTION. 165 

But now I require the House to consider it. Will you decide 
that a civil right does not mean a civil right ? And if this 
case of mine be not excepted, will you add it as an additional 
exception ? It might have been said by some of those who 
supported the bill, that it was intended by that measure to 
compensate a nation foi? bygone wrongs, and to form the 
foundation stone of a solid and substantial building, to be 
consecrated to the unity and peace of the empire. But if 
what is certain may be disturbed — if what words express may 
be erased — if civil rights may be determined not to be civil 
rights — if we are to be told that by some excuse, or by some 
pretext, what is not uncertain may be made so— we shall be 
put under an impossibihty to know what construction we must 
hereafter place on the statutes. I have endeavored to treat 
this House with respect. My title to sit in it is clear and 
plain ; and I contend that the statute is all comprehensive in its 
intention,, in its recital, and in its enactments. It comprehends 
every measure and principle of relief, with such exceptions 
as are thereinafter excepted. But while I show my respect 
to the House, I stand here on my right, and claim the benefit 
of it. 



SPEECH AT THE SECOND CLAEE ELECTION. 



[Mk. O'Connell arose and placed his hand several times upon his 
breast during the acclamations, evidently under the influence of 
powerful emotions.] 

I accept the trust, not with any presumptuous confidence in 
my own abihties, but simply with an honesty of intuition, and 
purity of motive. We have procured Emancipation, from the 
moral condition of the people, from that high enlightenment 
they had acqmred from their submission, their obedience to 
the laws, from their respect to the many ordinances of man 
and laws of God. 

It was impossible that that measure could be any longer 
withheld — but I complain of the results of that measure ; I 



166 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL o'CONNELL. 

complain tliat since it has passed, four montlis liave now 
elapsed and there has not been an effort employed on the 
part of the government, nor any disposition manifested to do 
away with the distinctions which then existed and which still 
continue to exist in the country. No, they are still kept alive 
as much as ever, and up to the period at which I now speak, 
there does not appear a single Cathohc who has derived the 
least benefit from the measure. In sx^eaking of your having 
elected me now, I shall still point out to you — I feel it my dut^ 
to do so — ^the injustice which has been done to you and me 
when the last election was made the subject of discussion in 
the House, and I must say that it has anything but my 
respect or submission upon that occasion. I heard the inso- 
lent opinion of the sj)eaker pronounced, and, though I am 
well aware of the little and contemptible motives by which he 
was actuated ; although I am well aware that they are of that 
description which the character of the sex from which they 
emanated should consign to silence, I shaU not say anything 
more about them now, but the time shall come when with 
your voice I will bring this matter forth. Upon that occa- 
sion, too, I have to complain of the conduct of a certain pro- 
fession, a profession to which I once considered it an honor to 
belong. I allude to the profession of the bar. 

The bar, in my opinion, have disgraced themselves in the 
discussion of my case, before the House of Commons. I put 
forward, npon that occasion, my opinions as to my right to sit 
and vote. I proved my right to sit and vote by the existing 
law. There was not one who came forward either by pam- 
phlet or letter to contradict my statement. If they had done 
so in print, I would immediately have annihilated them. Mr. 
Sugden committed one of the most egregious errors that ever 
a lawyer of any country was guilty of, upon that occasion. 
Mr. T^mdal waited, and in a dry, hum-di-um form of a speech 
in parliament, opposed me. It was a poor, miserable attempt at 
a speech, and this man has since become the Lord Chief-Jus- 
tice of England. That country is to be pitied that has such a 
judge. It is melancholy to reflect that elevation can be easily 
procured by abandonment of principle. There was another 
who opposed me — Mr. Sugden, one who has lately made him- 



SPEECH AT THE SECOND CLAEE ELECTION. 167 

self very remarkable by some ridiculous observation, but 
whose name lias not been introduced to-day. He committed 
an egregious blunder, and I nailed it to him. The first who 
opposed me, has since become a Chief -Justice, whilst another 
has been appointed his Majesty's Attorney-General for Eng- 
land. 

I cannot express the sentiments of abhorrence and contempt 
I entertain for the opinion pronounced by Sir James Scarlett. 
He was favorable in opinion to me, so much so that Mr. Hut- 
chinson, the member for Mallow, and others, told me they 
were convinced by the reasonings of Sir James Scarlett ; yet 
this man afterwards voted against me. Thus I was put down 
by parliamentary magic and two lawyers, both of whom are 
promoted, and one of whom advocated my cause at one period. 
I must, however, do justice to that portion of the profession 
who acted nobly, consistently, and honorably. I cannot be 
unmindful of the splendid aid of Henry Brougham, that man 
of unrivalled talent, who possesses more information than any 
other man I ever met. Oh, yes ; it gladdens my heart to 
reflect that I had such a man at my side, the brightest orna- 
ment in the British House of Commons, the statesman, the 
orator, the lawyer, the man of science, and the philosopher. 
There were others too who supported me. I cannot omit the 
names of Duncannon, Ebrington, of Rice, of Lloyd. 

[Yes, and said some individual, the Knight of Kerry.] 

Oh ; as to the Knight of Kerry, I hardly consider it a 
debt I owe him, to enumerate his distinguished name, one of 
the most honest men who ever entered into the House of Com- 
mons. There were also many who supported me among the 
high famihes of England. The iUustrious name of Grey can 
never be forgotten by me. I had his distinguished support. 
The decision, notwithstanding all, was against me. It was a 
decision in the face of the law. I told them so before the bar 
of the House — that there was an injustice done me, and an 
injustice in my person done to you. As far as I am concerned 
nothing shall prevent me tearing away the veil and showing 
the administration in all its naked deformity, for the purjjose 
of saving the country for the King and the people. I shaU 



168 SELECT SPEECHES OP DANIEL o'CONNELL. 

next allude to the destruction of tlie Catholic Association. It 
certainly reminds me — in truth it does, of the immortal Alexan- 
der, who " twice had slew the slain," — it was a most unneces- 
sary measure, for the Association had previously performed a 
wtual suicide. It was frightful to consider the consequence 
of that act ; it is a despotic power put into the hands of the 
Viceroy, and I complain of it because it bears, without dis- 
tinction, upon all classes. I shall not be one fortnight in the 
House until I call for its repeal. I shall demand, too, the re- 
peal of that act which deprived the vktuous forty-shilling 
freeholders of their franchise — an act which robbed two hun- 
dred and fifty thousand of the elective franchise in one day. 
The disfranchisement of the forty-shilling freeholders was 
a breach of the Union. It was the basis of the Union that 
the country should be represented by the forty- shilling free- 
holders among the constituency of the country, for the pur- 
pose of placing the representation of both kingdoms upon an 
equalization ; that equahzation wa3 now destroyed — the basis 
of the Union was therefore destroyed*, and the measure was 
grossly violated in this instance. Standing here now, as I do, 
for the first time, the undisputed member of the county of 
Clare, I pledge myself to have those virtuous men restored to 
their rights. As a favorable result of emancipation, and a 
disposition to dispense justice, the Ministry point, no doubt, 
to the late proclamation for the dispersion of Orange assem- 
bhes. I will admit this, but I am at liberty to canvass this 
proclamation ; it came a week just too late. I went, about a 
week before the fatal occurrence which called it forth, to Lord 
Levison Gower, and told him my apprehensions ; I told him 
I feared, if some timely and salutary measures were not taken, 
that sixty individuals, at least, would faU victims to Orange 
butchery. In a week afterw£Crds the proclamation is issued ; 
it reminds me of the familiar adage, that "he was a good 
servant who locked the stable door when the steed was stolen." 
His jnaster had certainly good reason to congratulate himself 
on the services of such a servant. There was no proclama- 
tion as long as the peox3le lay quiet, as long as they laid them- 
selves down to the fury of the Orange gang, as long as they 
patiently submitted to the sword ; as long as all this continued 



SPEECH AT THE SECOND CLAEE ELECTION. 169 

there was no proclamation ; but wlien the battle of Mackeon 
took place, which was gallant and victorious to the Catholics, 
then the proclamation was issued. 

• I shall now address you on a subject more closely allied to 
your feehngs, and I address you with pain, as I have to allude 
to myself. What, I ask, can I do for Clare ? I will tell you 
what I can't do, I cannot provide any one among you with 
place, pension, or office. I cannot meet the expectation of 
any one in this way. I don't care what the administration 
may be, I shall always be like the shepherd's dog, watching 
to mark where the rights and liberties of the people shall be 
infringed upon, to sound the alarm, to protect them from dan- 
ger. The first object to which my attention shall be directed, 
is to hold out the olive branch of peace to all — to reconcile 
the temporary separation between landlord and tenant — to 
engender those kindly and affectionate feelings between those 
respective classes which ought forever to exist, and, if possible, 
ought never to have suffered estrangement or ahenation. 
Upon the occasion of the last election, there were many and 
many who opposed me, who are now disposed to give me 
their support — and there were many who were actuated in 
that opposition by the most honorable motives. There is Mr. 
Vesey Fitzgerald, too, of whom I can scarcely speak in ade- 
quate terms of eulogy. I should be base, indeed, if I did not 
bestow upon him the commendations he deserves. The Cath- 
ohcs turned him out of the county, and the revenge which he 
practiced, was one of the best speeches I ever heard in thek 
favor. It was one of the greatest instances of generosity, 
which! ever before witnessed. I consider Mr. Vesey Fitz- 
gerald one of the ablest men in the cabinet, and if he were not 
encumbered with a certain pecuharity approaching to diffi- 
dence in his own powers, frequently the companion of great 
merit — he would be the first man in the cabinet. I shall now 
turn to my pubhc duties, and it may be asked, what are my 
qualifications ? I say it unaffectedly, I am no orator. I am 
a " plain blunt man," who speaks the plain language. My 
forensic habits have given me a facihty in delivering my sen- 
timents as they occur to my mind, without humming, or hav- 
ing to look for a better word. I have no pretensions to poetry. 



170 SELECT SPEECHES OF DAKEEL o'CONNELL. 

The Muses have never hovered over me "with their zephyr- 
auy wings, or carried me aloft on those wUd and ethereal voy- 
ages of fancy which are taken by her favorite votaries. I 
come, as I have said, to the House of Commons, a plain work- 
ing man, with honesty of intentions — a man of business. That 
man must be an early riser who is up before me ; and he must 
be a sober fellow who goes to bed with a more sober head than 
I do. When I go over to the House of Commons, it is my 
intention to be there fi'om the moment that prayers begin 
until the moment that all the business is over. I will be 
the first in the House and I shall be last out. I will read 
every bill, every word of it. -I come now, to what I con- 
sider my duties with regard to rehgion. If any question 
should come before the House on the subject of the discipline 
of the Estabhshed Church, I shall immediately walk out. I 
shall leave Protestants to deal with what leads to their own 
spiritual concerns. I should wish the same for myself, and I 
will do as I would be done by. But with respect to the tem- 
poralities of the Established Church, that is totally another 
subject. I should wish to bring about a suitable equahzation 
of church property, not that thousands of curates should hard- 
ly have the means of subsistence, while the bishops were riot- 
ing in luxury. The former have only £75 a year, while many 
of the bishops have twenty thousand ! The time is approach- 
ing when the system of tithes must be abohshed. France is 
now comfortable in the abolition of its tithes. If no one will 
introduce the subject, I will introduce it myself. I know that 
I shall have more Protestants than any other class to join me 
in this measure. I shall endeavor to put an end to the per- 
petually retm-ning litigation to which the CathoHcs and Dis- 
senters are subject, by these primeval transfers of deeds, which 
were a consuming gangrene to both Dissenters and Catholics 
in their pubhc charities. I shall endeavor to protect them by 
the law, free fi'om litigation. I go into parhament for fi-eedom 
for all men — Jew and Gentile, Heathen and Christian. I ex- 
cept, however, the subjects of that abominable monopoly, the 
East India Company, who still keep the abominations of the 
idol Juggernaut. I would leave those people to their supersti- 
tions, endeavoring to convince them by every reasonable argu- 



SPEECH AT THE SECOND CLAEE ELECTION. 171 

ment, but I should neither support nor encoui-age them, nor 
support those who would do so either. I would place no limit 
to the freedom of the human mind. But I shall pass fi'om 
these subjects, to those of much more interest. 

Let me di-aw your attention to a system of oaths, a horrible 
system of oaths. There are no less a number of oaths required 
to be taken in various pubhc departments than seventeen or 
eighteen hundred. There are a multitude of oaths ixi the ex- 
cise, and I shall make it my business to call for a list of all 
the public oaths which are now required to be taken in various 
departments, for the propose of having them abohshed. I 
condemn the taking of oaths altogether. The next subject to 
which I shall call your attention is that of parhamentary reform. 
I consider that it is calculated to give security to property and 
safety to life. I claim, in a word, for the people at large a 
full and free representation. I profess myself a radical reform- 
er. The voting should be by ballot, and carried on regularly 
in the parish in which each individual hved. I may be asked 
what are my sentiments respecting the duration of parliament. 
I will not quarrel much about that, but I am an advocate for 
full, free, and frequent parliaments. The parhament anterior 
to the year 1688 was triennial. For my part, in this particu- 
lar, I must say I am much attached to biennial parliaments. 
From this subject, I shall now turn to that of the Eepeal of the 
Union. I may be asked, shall I be able to effect this. "Who 
would be believed if, two years ago, he should have been haz- 
ardous enough to say, that this day I would stand the unques- 
tioned representative of the County of Clare ? I know that in 
seeking the Kepeal of the Union, I shall have the support of 
the Corporation of Dublin, however opposed to me upon other 
subjects. 

I now come to that species of reform which is the ob- 
ject of my darling sohcitude — the reform of law. The gov- 
ernment should pay all the expenses ; there should be no hire- 
ling advocacy. Prosecutors never see one another until they 
are brought into court, and their case comes on in tjie shape 
of a record. In every case of Htigation, the contending par- 
ties should previously see one another, the judge esx^lain the 
laws, and I have no doubt that under those circumstances a 



172 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

mutual compromise and arrangement would take place before 
the parties would leave the court. There is one subject more 
to which I shall advert. I am the respecter of authority. If 
calumny assail the Throne, then private life cannot be secure. 
I have read with horror some details of a distinguished indi- 
vidual in the London newspapers. The story of Captain 
Garth, however, must come to hght, and the Duke of Cumber- 
land, I liave no doubt, will be freed from the foul calumny with 
which be has been assailed. No — I shall not see the brother 
of my Eling attacked. I am no respecter of persons, but I 
will call for and demand investigation into this transaction. 
There is a moral progress at present in the world. There is 
no true basis for liberty but religion. 



SPEECH ON THE IRISH COERCION BILL. 
HOUSE OF COMMONS, FEBEUAKY 19, 1833. 



I WISH for a few minutes to attract the attention of the 
House to the situation of my long afflicted and much oj)pressed 
country. I do so at the earliest opportunity, because I wish 
to express to this House of Commons the situation in which 
that country is like to be x^laced. I shall, as far as I can, sup- 
press my emotions of indignation, and no longer follow my 
natural impulses. I shall not, whatever I may think, call the 
measure propounded for my country a bloody or a brutal one ; 
but at the same time I wish to be distinctly understood not 
in any degree retracting the epithets which I have applied to 
the conduct of his Majesty's ministers. "Whilst, however, I ab- 
stain from characterizing in harsh or strong language the pro- 
ceedings of government, I do not in the least compromise my 
opinions or cease from holding them in abhorrence. There 
are injuries of that nature that are too degrading for descrip- 
tion, and 'of too deep and vital consequence to allow of person- 
ahties or admit of personal considerations. I shall therefore 
abstain from both, and in discussing the subject which I am 
about to bring forward, I shall not only avoid personal but 



SPEECH ON THE lEISH COEKCION BILL. 173 

local considerations, and liope that nothing except mj accent 
shall on the occasion discover me to be an Irishman. 

I stand up here not merely to defend Irish rights, but I 
speak as if I were speaking of Enghsh, Scotch, or universal 
liberty ; in fact, it is as a defender of the last that I stand up 
to protest against certain proceedings which I understand are 
now in contemplation. Let it not however be supposed that 
oppression is the less abhorrent to me because I am less vio- 
lent in manner, and least of all, it should not be supposed that 
a quietness of demeanor on the part of a people is an indica- 
tion of a less determination of purpose. Death is preferable 
to oppression, and the people of Ireland, though tranquil, will 
not be the more submissive to the yoke which is to be imposed 
upon them. For my own part, the iron has not as yet entered 
into, my soul ; and notwithstanding the folly and the madness 
of the Administration, I have still a confiding hope in the 
integrity of the Reformed House of Commons. Before I pro- 
ceed to the consideration of a measure, which has been intro- 
duced elsewhere, I wish to set myseK right in regard to some 
statements, which have been made respecting me. It has 
been asserted that I encouraged certain tithe meetings, and 
that when I had called those assemblages together, I had 
shrunk from attendance. I here at once declare and solicit 
a denial, if it can be given, if there is any tmth in this state- 
ment. In point of fact, there is no truth in it ; there was not 
only no such thing, but there was no foundation for it ; and 
any assertion more destitute of the semblance of truth was 
never made. The fact is, that I was not even in Ireland at 
the time of the meetings referred to, and could not by possi- 
bility have undertaken to attend ; and if a Committee of In- 
quiry were granted to me, I would undertake to prove to 
demonstration, that the meetings of which I am said to be the 
originator, were got up by the friends of Lord Anglesea. I 
was, at the time, at the distance of three hundred miles from 
those meetings, and I appeal to this House whether it is fair 
to impose upon me the responsibility of meetings in which I 
had no concern. Over and over again have the acts of others 
been laid at my door, and without expressing any opinion 
upon the propriety of these meetings, I ask whether it is fair 



174: SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL o'CONNEIJL. 

to impute to me acts in Avliicli I have had no participation ? I 
have been frequently cakimniatecl when I only asked to be heard 
in reply. I court investigation into my conduct, and I defy 
the most rigid scrutiny. Enough, however, of this subject ; I 
liave something more important to attract the attention of the 
House ; important, though it bears the marks of drivelhng old 
age, and the total absence of a manly character. 

It would probably be thought that some of the measures of 
government were of a lieaUng and salutary nature, and that 
ministers had shown that they were Avell disposed toward 
Ireland. 

Let the House recollect what the ministers have done. 
They have indeed boasted of their church reform, and, as far 
as that goes, I accept it as a boon. What is it after all? 
The shght benefits it confers are prospective. It holds out no 
present advantages. True, it was a boon as far as the vestry 
cess, which, according to the statement of the noble lord, was 
sixty or seventy thousand pounds a year. The noble lord, in 
stating that as the amount of the vestry cess, stated also that 
the income of the clergy was about seven hundred thousand 
pounds. Did the noble lord, did any person who knew any- 
thing about Ireland, think or believe that the vestry cess 
amounted to one tenth of the income of the Protestant clergy 
of Ireland ? Let me, however, not be misunderstood. I ac- 
cept tliat boon and accept it gratefully, trifling as it is. At 
the same time, I wish the House to know that it is only a 
small relief from large and vexatious grievances. I do not 
retract one expression of approbation at the measure of the 
noble lord, not because I think it of any benefit, but because 
I recognize in his mind a good principle. It recognized this, 
that the state had a right to dispose of church property, and 
it incidentally admitted that the church establishment was 
disproportioned to the wants or wishes of the country. 

The noble lord had announced to the House that he meant 
to reduce a certain number of bishops ; but that reduction did 
not embrace any lessening of the amount to be paid to the 
estabUshment. What could be more ridiculous than offering 
that as a boon which in no way lessened taxation ? The far- 
mer, under the measure, would not have to pay less of tithes, 



SPEECH ON THE IBISH COEECION BILL. " 175 

nor would the peasant liave to pay a less contribution of Ms 
potatoes. Some few nights since, the right honorable Secre- 
tary for Ireland, had expressed himself iu terms of kindness 
towards the Irish, and without scrutinizing the motives of the 
right honorable Secretary, I received those expressions with 
grateful emotion. I advert to tliis for the purpose of show- 
ing that I consider the present measures, not as the acts of 
the right honorable Secretary, but as those of the government, 
and upon that government I was at once disposed to throw the 
whole responsibility. With that government I shall at once 
grapple, and though I may be laughed at, I will still appeal 
to the House of Commons, and until they have betrayed them- 
selves, I shall never beheve that they will consent to any act 
which would annihilate every trace of pubhc freedom. Would 
they allow such a measure as now propounded to be enacted for 
England or for Scotland ? Certainly not. Why then tolerate 
it for Ireland ? This was, however, a matter for the considera- 
tion of the House of Commons, and in rising upon this occa- 
sion, my object is more to ehcit the opinions of others than to 
express any of my own. The Irish are often reproached with 
acrimony, and perhaps there is some truth in the observation. 
But that is foreign from the subject : and even if true, the 
question is, is there any ground for the acrimony ? However, 
there is another question; the real one is, whether this 
House is pledged to adopt coercive measures towards Ire- 
land ? True it is, they voted for the Address, but they were 
not therefore pledged to any particular line of coercive mea- 
sures ; and I, for one, can never believe, until I see it, that a 
reformed House of Commons wUl, by supporting a govern- 
ment, vote for the degradation of the Irish people. 

The House has gone a great way in supporting ministers, 
but they will halt when the progress of government is toward 
despotism. And I would repeat that the government will never 
be supported in any measures that wUl tend to Irish degrada- 
tion. The Under Secretary of the Treasury had, in some cal- 
culation which he had brought before the House, attempted 
to show that the connection between England and Ireland was 
most beneficial to the latter, and he flung back upon me the 
imputation of having misrepresented the views of government. 



176 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

The Under Secretary flung back, with apparent indignation, 
my charges that the government meant to supersede the Con- 
stitution and suspend the Habeas Corpus Act. Now, I ask 
the House whether I was right in my anticipations. If I was 
right, the Under Secretary is now bound to come forward and 
support me. 

Is there any intention of suspending the Habeas Corpus Act? 
Is there any intention of subverting the constitution as far as 
regarded Ii-eland? Perhaps there is not ; if so, I am certainly 
in error. But I am right. I call upon the Under Secretary, 
instead of pronouncing me a calumniator, to come forward 
and support me. However that may be, I will state this 
much : that the measure which I understand is in contempla- 
tion, is bottomed on the most glaring and notorious falsehoods. 
It is but a sample of the many acts of Whig treachery which 
have been practiced towards Ireland. It is one of those black 
and gloomy spots which indicate Whig ascendency. That fac- 
tion has always been hostile and faithless to Ireland. They 
were in power when Limerick surrendered, and the conduct of 
the brave men who commanded that garrison presented a 
striking contrast to that of the Whigs. On that occasion a 
convention was signed, and immediately afterwards a French 
armament appeared in the bay and proffered assistance to the 
garrison ; but the brave and gallant army, who had once 
phghted thek honor, refused their assistance and stood firm 
to their honor. They had signed the treaty, and from their 
signatures they would not depart. Yet, these were the peojDle 
uj)on whom the Whigs attefapted every atrocity. They are to 
be subjected to martial law and to be deprived of every indem- 
nity in case of false accusation. They cannot even appear at 
prayer meetings, and in case of any charge against them, they 
are not to be tried in their own counties, but the venue is to be 
changed. 

Mr. C. W. Wynn rose to order. I wish to know whether it 
is competent for any member in this House to refer to proceed- 
ings elsewhere; whether, in point of fact, those proceedings 
might, or might not, come under their notice. 

Me. O'Connell. — I have cautiously abstained from alluding 
to proceedings in another place, and merely supposed that 



SPEECH ON THE lEISH COERCION BILL. . 177 

such proceedings were in contemplation. Tlie King's minis- 
ters are reported and believed to intend to introduce into the 
House certain measures. 

The Speaker said there could be no doubt that what the 
right honorable gentleman said was strictly in accordance with 
the rules of the House ; but the question to be considered was, 
did it apply to the course of observation pursued by the hon- 
orable and learned member ? It was not only contrary to the 
rules of that House for any honorable member to discuss a 
measure only before the other House of Parhament, but it 
v/ould be extremely inconvenient. The great difficulty, how- 
ever, the Chair felt in aU such cases, was, to know whether 
the honorable gentleman was merely alluding to matters of 
notoriety or to measures generally, or by him attributed to 
government, or whether he was alluding to a particular mea- 
sure before the other House ? He was quite sure that what 
had fallen from the right honorable gentleman was perfectly 
in consonance with the rules of the House ; and he was also 
quite sure that it would also have the effect of putting the 
honorable and learned gentleman on his guard, and prevent 
the possibility of his infringing upon those wholesome regu- 
lations. 

Mr. O'Connell. — The courtesy and distiuctness of the de- 
cision of the Chair must ensure my prompt and perfect com- 
pliance. I say, then, that I speak not of what has occurred in 
another place. But my course of conduct is this : — his Ma- 
jesty's government ask the House of Commons to confirm a 
vote of* supply for three thousand pounds ; and I take this 
opportunity to call the attention of the House to the policy of 
government. Further, I attribute to that government certain 
schemes, to which I feel it necessary to call attention, as in 
voting supphes the House sanctioned the conduct of govern- 
ment. One of the schemes with which I charge the govern- 
ment is, an intention to change the venue. 

I am sorry the honorable member with the flourishing consti- 
tuency, the honorable member for Leeds, is not in his place, 
or else I would call upon him to describe this change of 
venue. The honorable member had alluded to the subject, and 
had said that Ireland indeed would have had a grievance had 



178 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

the Catholics of the south been subjected to a change of 
venue as the Americans were. But what did the ministers 
now intend ? Why, to send the Catholics of the south before 
what the honorable member for Leeds calls the prejudiced 
Orangemen of the north for trial. Oh ! I thank the honorable 
member for Leeds for his allusion to what was one of the 
great grievances of Massachusetts, a grievance which drove 
it not only to rebellion, but to revolution, for be it remembered, 
the struggle with the parent country was not always fatal to the 
resistant ? There are times when wrong is heaped upon wrong 
till at length the oppressed, out of its very weakness, becomes 
strong and achieves a victory which sanctifies acts that had 
otherwise been rebellion. But what was one of the grievances 
that drove the Americans to revolt ? Why, they complained 
that the American was taken from his OAvn country and his 
own tribunals, to be tried in England. To take a Catholic 
from Ireland and to try him in England, before an English 
jury, would be, judging upon analogy, such an act as the 
Americans were justified in resisting, and as the high-minded 
reformers of England would never sanction. This is one of 
the measures I accuse the government of intending to intro- 
duce, and I call upon the reformers of England to say whether 
they will comply with and give their voice for the enforcement 
of so iniquitous a proceeding. 

The giievance the Americans complained of was nothing to 
that with which Lreland is threatened. The Americans were 
taken from their own country, it is true, but they were tried 
by juries and by the judges bf the land. See the scheme that 
was proposed for L:eland. It was to be in the Lord Lieute- 
tenant to declare any district in a state of disturbance ; it was 
to be in the power of one man to outlaw Ireland or any part 
of it, and the part so outlawed was to be subject to mihtary 
tribunals. The law of the land was to become a dead letter 
at the dictum of a single man, Habeas Corpus was to be of no 
effect, and even the ears of parhament were to be closed 
against the appeal of the oppressed. The honorable member 
for Oldham, whose excellent sense had enabled him to mark 
out a safe and wholesome course of proceeding, has complained 
of the use of professional terms and phrases unintelligible to 



SPEECH ON THE IRISH COERCION BILL. 179 

the general listener. The complaint is just. Therefore in this 
case let them not hear any more about the suspension of 
Habeas Corpus, but rather let them hear that one man is to 
have the power of imprisoning whom he chooses in Ireland. 
Such is the fact. And a man being imprisoned, by whom is 
he to be tried ? By the judges of the land and juries ? No 
such thing. But by five mihtary officers, who have each held 
a commission two years. Yes, there was another provision, 
the officers must be above twenty-one years of age. 

[On Mr. Shiel prompting Mr. O'Connell, Mr. Stanley rose to 
order,] 

Mr. O'Connell. — The right honorable gentleman had risen 
to call him to order, and instead of doing so had forestalled 
him by a reply. Oh ! let Ireland at least be heard ; let her 
have fair play. If Ireland is to be gagged, let it not at least 
be without a hearing. 

The Speaker said he felt himself called upon to interrupt 
the honorable and learned member. Nothing could be clearer 
than that it was disorderly for any honorable member to go 
into the details of a measure not before the House, but before 
the other House of Parliament. He had before stated that 
to be the case, and he had done so the rather because when 
before called upon to maintain order, the honorable and 
learned member had not arrived at the point he now noticed 
as irregular, although there might be reason to apprehend he 
would do so. The honorable and learned member had now 
gone into that detail, and if it was not meant as having refer- 
ence to some measure before the other House of ParUament, 
but was to be taken as a mere supposition, he left to the hon- 
orable and learned member to say how much it would assist 
his argument. 

Mr. O'Connell. — I will obey the injunction of the chair. I 
speak upon supposition. I attribute to the government, 
whether right or wrong — if wrong I shall be contradicted — 
I attribute to the government, nay, to the noble lord (the 
Chancellor of the Exchequer) — for to avoid even the appear- 
ance of personahty, I will not mention the right honorable 
secretary (Mr. Stanley) — I attribute to the noble lord an 



180 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL o'CONNELL. 

intention to introduce as a minister to the Crown, a measure 
to enable five military officers to dispose of the liberty, if not 
the hves of such of his Majesty's subjects in Ireland as the 
Lord Lieutenant chooses to send before them. Nay, a major- 
ity of five members are to have that power. I am not sur- 
prised at the sentiments of the right honorable secretary. It 
is but natural for the right honorable gentleman to shrink 
from any participation in so monstrous, so horrible a scene. 
Never was a plan more strongly marked with despotic boldness 
and tyrannical determination than this. But can it be ? Is 
it possible that his Majesty's government will dare to propose 
to a British House of Commons to give to three military offi- 
cers the power of destroying the hberty of the peoj)le of Ire- 
land ? Is that a plan for an English nobleman to originate, 
and for an Enghsh House of Commons to sanction ? But is 
that all ? Oh, no ! 

The Americans complained of the venue being changed 
from America to England, but the Americans were tried by 
the judges of the land and by juries. Such is not to be the 
case with my countrymen. No, they are to be handed over 
to a military tribunal of three officers. And what is the char- 
acter of this tribunal ? I admire the British army. A braver 
never went into the field. I admire, too, the character of the 
officers in private life. They are humane, enlightened, kindly. 
But what are the mihtary tribunals to do ? How may they not 
be composed ? If three ensigns or three lieutenants formed a 
majority of one of them, would they venture to exercise their 
judgments in opposition to the wishes of government ? They 
dare not. If they did, they would be dismissed the service. 
The tribunal projected was open to every influence in the way 
of patronage and interest that could take from it the character 
of impartiahty or justice ; and it is to such a tribunal that the 
King's subjects in Ireland are to be delivered over, bound, 
fettered, and gagged. Nay, more, to such a tribunal is to be 
given the power of punishing men for not giving evidence. 
Oh, let honorable members call to mind the scenes under a 
similar but not so atrocious system. I remember one trial 
which occurred in 1798. Upon it a poor wretch named Grady 
was called as a witness, and the trial took place in Kerry. By- 



SPEECH ON THE lEISH COERCION BILL. 181 

the-by, it is a fact worthy of notice, that in 1798 there was 
little or no disturbance in the great CathoHc counties. In 
Galway there was no disturbance, in Kerry but one, in Cork 
and iu other Cathohc counties, all was peace. But with respect 
to Grady ; he was called before one of these tribunals to give 
evidence, and his answer not being satisfactory, he was ordered 
out and to receive one hundred lashes. He received them, and 
was again brought before the tribunal. To the same question 
he made the same answer, and he was ordered to receive a 
second one hundred lashes. He did receive them, and was 
brought in a third time. The same question was repeated, 
and a third time he gave the same answer. He was ordered 
out to receive a third one hundred lashes, and while the pun- 
ishment was being inflicted, he fainted almost to death. He 
was not brought up again. WiU the House forget that such 
scenes as that have occurred before a military tribunal ? Are 
we, with such horrible facts on record, to have Court Martial 
in Ireland ? 

It will not be necessary before a Reformed Parliament, and 
in the nineteenth century, to do more than to point out such 
atrocities to bring on their universal execration. I charge the 
noble lord with this — intending to introduce a bill which is 
to be a selection of all the bitterest parts of all the severest 
acts ever passed for the coercion of Ireland. I would ask the 
noble lord this — ^Is it not a part of your plan to render the 
military tribunals irresponsible to the law ? I repeat — ^it is to 
the British Parliament in the nineteenth century I am calling 
attention to such monstrous matters. Will this parliament 
desert Ireland ? Ireland has stood by England in the great 
fight for reform, and should not England now stand by Ireland 
when it implores and demands that every particle of the life 
and spirit of the constitution shaU. not be destroyed ? 

I will not now go further into details. It must be unneces- 
sary for me to do so. I have said enough to excite the inter- 
est of any lover of liberty who has heard me, or it is not in the 
power of langTiage to do so. I demand for my country that 
the constitution shall not be suppressed — that the constitution 
shall not be frittered away by unknown private witnesses. 
Before Ireland is menaced with even the semblance of Uberty, 



182 SELECT SPEECHES OF DAKEEL CONNELL. 

let her at least be heard, let her meet her accusers face to face, 
and in the light of day. If Ii'eland is to be deprived of the 
constitution, and of her Uberties, at least let her be heard in 
her defence. According to the plan of the ministers, Ireland 
is to be dumb ; that great and important privilege, the right 
of petition, is to be suppressed. Will England inflict upon 
Ireland so iniquitous a wrong ? 

[The honorable and learned member, after thanking the House 
for the patience with which they had heard him, concluded by en- 
treating the House, by an expression in favor of an inquuy, before 
the exaction of measures of severity, to entitle themselves to the 
eternal gratitude of the Irish people.] 



SPEECH AT MULLAGHMAST MONSTEE MEETING, 
SEPTEMBEE, 1843. 



I ACCEPT, with the greatest alacrity, the high honor you have 
done me in calling me to the chair of this majestic meeting. 
I feel more honored than I ever did in my hfe, with one sin- 
gle exception, and that related to, if possible, an equally ma- 
jestic meeting at Tara. But I must say that if a comparison 
were instituted between them, it would take a more discriminat- 
ing eye than mine to discover any difference between them. 
There are the same incalculable numbers — there is the same 
firmness — there is the same determination — there is the same 
exhibition of love to old Ireland — there is the same resolution 
not to violate the peace — ^not to be guilty of the shghtest out- 
rage — not to give the enemy power by committing a crime, 
but peacefully and manfuUy to stand together in the open day 
— to protest before man, and in the presence of God, against 
the iniquity of continuing the Union. 

At Tara, I protested against the Union — ^I repeat the protest 
Mullaghmast. I declare solemnly my thorough conviction, 
as a constitutional lawyer, that the Union is totally void in 
point of principle and of constitutional force. I teU you that 
no portion of the empire had the power to traffic on the rights 



SPEECH AT MULLAGHMAST. 183 

and liberties of the Irish people. The Irish people nominated 
them to make laws, and not legislatures. They were ap- 
pointed to act under the constitution and not annihilate it. 
Their delegation from the people was confined within the hmits 
of the constitution, and the moment the Irish parhament went 
beyond those limits and destroyed the constitution, that mo- 
ment it annihilated its own power, but could not annihilate 
the immortal spirit of hberty, which belongs, as a rightful in- 
heritance, to the people of Ireland. Take it then from me 
that the Union is void, I admit there is the force of a law, 
because it has been supported by the pohceman's truncheon 
— by the soldier's bayonet — and by the horseman's sword ; be- 
cause it is supported by the courts of law and those who have 
power to adjudicate in them ; but I say solemnly, it is not sup- 
ported by constitutional right. The Union, therefore, in my 
thorough conviction, is totally void, and I avail myself of this 
opportunity to announce to several hundred of thousands of my 
fellow-subjects, that the Union is an unconstitutional law, and 
that it is not fated to last long — its hour is approaching. 
America offered us her sympathy and support. We refused 
the support but we accepted the sympathy ; and while we ac- 
cepted the sympathy of the Americans we stood upon the firm 
ground of the right of every human being to hberty ; and I, in 
the name of the Irish nation, declare that no support ob- 
tained from America should be purchased by the price of 
abandoning principle for one moment, and that principle is, 
that every human being is entitled to freedom. 

My friends, I want nothing for the Irish but their country, 
and I think the Irish are competent to obtain their own coun- 
try for themselves, I hke to have the sympathy of every good 
man everywhere, but I want not armed support or physical 
strength from any country. The Eepubhcan party in France 
offered me assistance. I thanked them for their sympathy, 
but I distinctly refused to accept any support from them. I 
want support from neither France nor America, and if that 
usurper, Louis Philippe, who trampled on the liberties of his 
own gaUant nation, thought fit to assail me in his newspaper, 
I returned the taunt with double vigor, and I denounce him to 
Europe and the world as a treacherous tyrant, who has violated 



184 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

the compact witli liis own coiintiy, and therefore is not fit to 
assist the liberties of any other country. I want not the sup- 
port of France ; I want not the support of America ; I have 
physical support enough about me to acliieve any change ; 
but you know well that it is not my plan — I will not risk the 
safety of one of you. I could not afford the loss of one of 
you — I wiR protect you all, and it is better for you all to be 
merry and alive, to enjoy the repeal of the Union ; but there 
is not a man of you there that would not, if we were attacked 
unjustly and illegally, be ready to stand in the open field by 
my side. Let every man that concurs ia that sentiment' lift 
up liis hand. 

[Every individual in the immense multitude lifted liis hand 
amidst tremendous cheering.] 

The assertion of that sentiment is our sure protection, for 
no person will attack us, and we will attack nobody. Indeed, 
it would be the height of absurdity for us to think of making 
any attack ; for there is not one maji in his senses in Europe 
or America, that does not admit that the repeal of the Union 
is now inevitable. The English papers taunted us, and their 
writers laughed us to scorn ; but now they admit that it is im- 
possible to resist the application for repeal. More power to 
you. But that even shows we have power enough to know 
how to use it. Why, it is only this week that one of the lead- 
ing London newspapers, called the Morning Herald, who had 
a reporter at the Lismore meeting, published an account of 
that great and mighty meeting, and in that account the writer 
expressly says that it wUl be impossible to refuse so peacea- 
ble, so determined, so unanimous a people, as the people of 
L.-eland, the restoration of their domestic legislature. For my 
own i)art, I would have thought it wholly unnecessary to call 
together so large a meeting as this, but for the trick played by 
Wellington, and Peel, and Graham, and Stanley, and the rest 
of the paltry administration, by whose government this coun- 
try is disgraced. I don't suppose so worthless an administra- 
tion ever before got together. Lord Stanley is a renegade from 
Whiggism, and Sir James Graham is worse. Sir Eobert Peel 
has five hundred colors on his bad standard, and not one of 
them is permanent. To-day it is orange, to-morrow it will 



SPEECH AT MULLAGHMAST. 185 

be green, the day after neither one nor the other, but we shall 
take care that it shall never be dyed in blood. 

Then there is the poor old Duke of "Wellington, and nothing 
was ever so absurd as their deification of him in England. 
The EngUsh historian — ^rather the Scotch one — ^AHson, an ar- 
rant Tory, admits that the Duke of Welhngton was surprised 
at Waterloo, and if he got victoriously out of that battle, it 
was owing to the valor of the British troops, and their uncon- 
querable determination to die, but not to yield. No' man was 
ever a good soldier, but the man who goes into the battle de- 
termined to conquer or not come back from the battle-field. 
No other principle makes a good soldier — conquer or die is 
the battle cry for the good soldier ; conquer or die is his only 
security. The Duke of Welhngton had troops at Waterloo 
that had learned that word, and there were Irish troops 
amongst them. You all remember the verses made by the 
poor Shan Van Yocht : 

"At famed Waterloo, 
Duke Wellington would look blue 
If Paddy was not there too, 
Says the Shan Van Vocht." 

Yes, the glory he got there was bought by the blood of the 
Enghsh, Irish, and Scotch soldiers — the glory was yours. He 
is nominally a member of the administration, but yet they 
would not entrust him with any kind of office. He has no 
duty at aU to perform, but a sort of Irish anti-repeal warden. 
I thought I never would be obliged to the ministry, but I am 
obhged to them. They put a speech abusing the Irish into 
the Queen's mouth. They accused us of disaffection, but 
they lie — it is their speech — there is no disaffection in Ireland. 
We were loyal to the sovereigns of Great Britain, even when 
they were our enemies — ^we were loyal to George the Third, 
even when he betrayed us — we were loyal to George the 
Fourth, when he blubbered and cried when we forced him to 
emancipate us. We were loyal to old BiHy, though his min- 
ister put into his mouth a base, bloody, and intolerant speech 
against Ireland; and we are loyal to the Queen, no matter 
what our enemies may say to the contrary. It is not the 



186 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

Queen's speech, and I pronounce it to be a lie. There is no 
dissatisfaction in Ireland, but there is this — a full determina- 
tion to obtain justice and Hbertj. I am much obliged to the 
ministry for that speech, for it gives me, amongst other things, 
an opportunity of addressing such meetings as this. I had 
held the monster meetings. I had fully demonstrated the 
opinion of Ireland. I was convinced their unanimous de- 
termination to obtain Hberty was sufficiently signified by 
the many meetings already held ; but when the mimister's 
speech came out, it was necessary to do something more. 
Accordingly, I called a monster meeting in Loughrea. I 
called another meeting in Clifden. I had another monster 
meeting in Lismore, and here now we are assembled on the 
Eath of Mullaghmast. 

At Mullaghmast (and I have chosen this for this obvious 
reason), we are on the precise spot where EngHsh treachery — 
aye, and false Irish treachery, too — consummated a massacre 
that has never been imitated, save in the massacre of the 
Mamelukes by Mahomet Ali. It was necessary to have Turks 
atrocious enough to commit a crime equal to that perpetrated 
by Enghshmen. But do not think that the massacre at Mul- 
laghmast was a question between Protestants and Catholics — 
it was no such thing. The murdered persons were to be sure 
Cathohcs, but a great number of the murderers were also 
Cathohcs, and Irishmen, because there were then, as well as 
now, many Cathohcs who were traitors to Ireland. But we 
have now this advantage, that we have many honest Protest- 
ants joining us — ^joining us heartily in hand and heart, for old 
Ireland and liberty. I thought this a fit and becoming spot 
to celebrate, in the open day, our unanimity in declaring our 
determination not to be misled by any treachery. Oh, my 
friends, I will keep you clear of all treachery — ^there shall be 
no bargain, no compromise with England — we shall take 
nothing but repeal, and a parliament in College Green. You 
win never, by my advice, confide in any false hopes they hold 
out to you ; never confide in anything coming from them, or 
cease from your struggle, no matter what promise may be 
held out to you, until you hear me say I am satisfied ; and I 
win tell you where I will say that — near the statue of King 



SPEECH AT MULLAGHMAST. 187 

William, in College Green. No, we came liere to express our 
determination to die to a man, if necessary, in the cause of old 
Ireland. We came to take advice of each other, and above 
all, I beheve you came here to take my advice. I can tell 
you, I have the game in my hand — I have the triumph secure 
— I have the repeal certain, if you but obey my advice. 

[Great cheers, and cries of " We vs^ill obey you in any- 
thmg."] 

I will go slow — you must allow me to do so — ^but you will go 
sm^e. No man shall find himself imprisoned or persecuted 
who follows my advice. I have led you thus far in safety ; 
I have swelled the multitude of repealers until they are identi- 
fied with the entire population, or nearly the entu'e population 
of the land, for seven eighths of the Irish people are now en- 
rolling themselves repealers. [Cheers and cries of more power 
to you.] I don't want more power ; I have power enough, and 
all I ask of you is to allow me to use it. I will go on quietly 
and slowly, but I wiU go on firmly, and with a certainty of 
success. I am now arranging, a plan for the formation of the 
Irish House of Commons. 

It is a theory, but it is a theory that may be realized in 
three weeks. The repeal arbitrators are beginning to act — 
the people are submitting their differences to men chosen by 
themselves. You wUl see by the newspapers that Dr. Gray, 
and my son, and other gentlemen, have akeady held a petty 
session of their own, where justice will be administered free 
of aU expense to the people. The people shall have chosen 
magistrates of their own in the room of the magistrates who 
have been removed. The people shall submit their differences 
to them, and shaU have strict justice administered to them, 
that shall not cost them a single farthing. I shall go on with 
that plan untU we have aU. disputes settled and decided by 
justices appointed by the people themselves. [Long may you 
live.] I wish to hve long enough to have perfect justice ad- 
ministered to Ireland, and hberty proclaimed throughout the 
land. It win take me some time to prepare my plan for the 
formation of the new Irish House of Commons-^-that plan 
which we win yet 'submit to her Majesty for her approval, 
when she gets rid of her present paltry administration and 



188 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

lias one tliat I can support. But I must finish that job be- 
fore I go forth, and one of my reasons for calhng you together 
is to state my intentions to you. Before I arrange my plan 
the Conciliation Hall Yfill be finished, and it will be worth any 
man's while to go from Mullaghmast to Dublin to see it. 

When we have it arranged I will call together three hundred, 
as the Times called them, bogtrotters, but better men never 
stepped on pavement. But I will have the three hundred and 
no thanks to them. Wales is up at present, almost in a state 
of insurrection. The people there have found that the land- 
lords' power is too great, and has been used tyranically, and I 
believe you agree with them tolerably well in that. They in- 
sist on the sacredness of the right of the tenants to security of 
possession, and with the equity of tenure which I would es- 
tabhsh, we will do the landlords full justice, but we will do 
the people justice also. We wiU recollect that the land is the 
landlord's, and let him have the benefit of it, but we will also 
recollect that the labor belongs to the tenant, and the tenant 
must have the value of his labor, not transitory and by the 
day, but permanently and by the year. Yes, my frielids, for 
this purpose I must get some time. I worked the present re- 
peal year tolerably well. I beheve no one in January last, 
would believe that we could have such a meeting within the 
year as the Tara demonstration. You may be sure of this — 
and I say it in the presence of him who will judge me — that 
I never wiU willfully deceive you. I have but one wish under 
heaven, and that is for the hberty and pros^Derity of Ireland. 
I am for leaving England to the English, Scotland to the 
Scotch, but we must have L^eland for the Irish. I will not be 
content until I see not a single man in any office, from the 
lowest constable to the Lord Chancellor, but Irishmen. This is 
our land, and we must have it. We will be obedient to the 
Queen, joined to England by the golden link of the Crown, 
but we must have our own parUament, our own bench, our 
own magistrates, and we will give some of the shoneens who 
now occupy the bench leave to retire, such as those lately ap- 
pointed by Sugden. He is a pretty boy, sent here from Eng- 
land ; but I ask, did you ever hear such a name as he has got ? 
I remember, in Wexford, a man told me he had a pig at home 



SPEECH AT MULLAGHMAST. 189 

which he was so fond of that he would call it Sugden. No ; 
we shall get judicial independence for Ireland. It is for this 
purpose we are assembled here to-day, as every countenance 
I see around me testifies. If there is any one here who is for 
the Union, let him say so. Is there anybody here for the 
repeal. [Cries of " all, aU," and loud cheering.] 

Yes, my friends, the Union was begot in iniquity — it was 
perpetrated in fraud and cruelty. It was no compact, no bar- 
gain, but it was an act of the most decided tyranny and cor- 
ruption that was ever yet perpetrated. Trial by jury was sus- 
pended — the right of personal protection was at an end — 
courts martial sat throughout the land — and the county of 
Kildare, among others, flowed with blood. Oh, my friends, 
Hsten now to the man of peace, who will never expose you to 
the power of your enemies. In 1798 there were some brave 
men, some vahant men, to head the people at large, but there 
were many traitors, who left the people in the power of their 
enemies. The Curragh of Kildare afforded an instance of 
the fate which Irishmen were to expect, who confided in their 
Saxon enemies. Oh, it was an iU-organized, a premature, a 
foohsh, and an absurd insurrection ; but you have a leader now 
who never will allow you to commit any act so foolish or so 
destructive. How dehghted do I feel with the thorough con- 
viction which has come over the minds of the people, that they 
could not gratify your enemies more than by committing a 
crime. No ; our ancestors suffered for confiding in the Eng- 
lish, but we never will confide in them. They suffered for 
being divided amongst themselves. There is no division 
amongst us. They suffered for their own dissensions — for 
not standing man to man by each other's side. We shall 
stand peaceably side by side in the face of every enemy. Oh, 
how delighted was I in the scenes which I witnessed as I 
came along here to-day ! How my heart throbbed, how my 
sphit was elevated, how my bosom swelled with delight at the 
multitude which I beheld, and which I shall behold, of the 
stalwart and strong men of KUdare ! I was delighted at the 
activity and force that I saw around me, and my old heart 
grew warm again in admiring the beauty of the dark-eyed 
maids and matrons of Kildare. Oh, there is a starlight spark- 



190 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

ling from the eye of a Kildare beauty, that is scarcely equalled, 
and could not be excelled all over the world. And remember 
that you are the sons, the fathers, the brothers, and the hus- 
bands of such women, and a traitor or a coward could never 
be connected with any of them. Yes, I am in a county, re- 
markable in the history of Ireland for its bravery and its mis- 
fortune, for its creduhty in the faith of others, for its people 
judged of the Saxon by the honesty and honor of their own 
natures. I am in a county celebrated for the sacredness of 
its shrines and fanes. I am in a county where the lamp of 
Kildare's holy shrine burned with its sacred fire, through ages 
of darkness and storm — that fire which for six centuries burned 
before the high altar without being extinguished, being fed 
continuously, without the slightest interruption, and it seemed 
to me to have been not an inapt representation of the continu- 
ous fidehty and rehgious love of country of the men of Kil- 
dare. Yes, you have those high qualities — religious fidelity, 
continuous love of country. Even your enemies admit that 
the world has never produced any people that exceeded the 
Irish in activity and strength. The Scottish philosopher has 
declared, and the French philosopher has confirmed it, that 
number one in the human race is, blessed be Heaven, the 
Irishman. In moral virtue, in rehgion, in perseverance, and 
in glorious temperance, you excel. Have I any teetotallers 
here ? Yes, it is teetotahsm that is repealing the Unioil. I 
could not afford to bring you together, I would not dare to 
bring you together, but that I had the teetotallers for my 
police. 

Yes, among the nations of the earth, Ireland stands number 
one in the physical strength of her sons, and in the beauty 
and purity of her daughters. Ireland, land of my forefathers, 
how my mind expands, and my spirit walks abroad in some- 
thing of majesty, when I contemplate the high quahties, ines- 
timable virtues, the tnie purity and piety, and religious fidelity 
of the inhabitants of your green fields and productive moun- 
tains. Oh, what a scene surrounds us ! — It is not only the 
countless thousands of brave and active and peaceable and 
religious men that are here assembled, but nature herself has 
wi-itten her character with the finest beauty in the verdant 



SPEECH AT MULLAGHMAST. 191 

plains tliat surround us. Let any man run round the horizon 
with his eye, and tell me if created nature ever produced any- 
thing so green and so lovely, so undulating, so teeming with 
production. The richest harvests that any land can produce 
are those reaped in Ireland ; and then here are the sweetest 
meadows, the greenest fields, the loftiest mountains, the purest 
streams, the noblest rivers, the most capacious harbors — and 
her water power is equal to turn the machinery of the whole 
world. Oh, my friends, it is a country worth fighting for — it 
is a country worth dying for ; but above aU, it is a country 
worth being tranquil, determined, submissive and docile ; for 
disciphned as you are in obedience to those who are breaking 
the way, and tramphng down the barriers between you and 
your constitutional liberty, I will see every man of you hav- 
ing a vote, and every man protected by the baUot from the 
agent or landlord. I wiU see labor protected, and every title 
to possession recognized, when you are industrious and hon- 
est. I wiU see prosperity again throughout your land — the 
busy hum of the shuttle and the tinkling of the smithy shall 
be heard again. We shall see the nailer employed even until 
the middle of the night, and the carpenter covering himself with 
his chips. I will see prosperity in all its gradations spreading 
through a happy, contented, rehgious land. I will hear the 
hymn of a happy people go forth at sunrise to God in praise 
of his mercies — and I wUl see the evening sun set down 
amongst the uplifted hands of a rehgious and free population. 
Every blessing that man can bestow and religion can confer 
upon the faithful heart, shall spread throughout the land. 
Stand by me — ^join with me — I will say be obedient to me, 
and Ireland shall be free. 



192 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL o'CONNELL. 



MR. O'CONNELL'S SPEECH IN HIS OWN DEFENCE, 

At the Irish State Trials, 1844, in the Court of Queen's Bench, 
in Ireland, in the case of the Queen vs. Daniel O'Gonnell and 
others. 



Gentlemen, I beg your patient attention, while I show you, 
in as few sentences as I possibly can, and in my own plain and 
j)rosiac style, the right I have to demand from you a favorable 
verdict. I ask it without disrespect and without flattery — I 
ask it on the ground of common sense ^nd common justice — 
upon these grounds I demand your favorable verdict, being 
thoroughly convinced that I am plainly entitled to it. I do 
not feel that I should have been warranted in addressing you 
at all, after the many speeches you have aheady heard, and 
that powerful display of talent that so dehghted, as weU as I 
trust instructed you; but I do not stand here my own chent. 
I have clients of infinitely more importance. My clients, in 
this case, are the Irish people — my client is Ireland — and I 
stand here the advocate of the rights, and hberties, and con- 
stitutional privileges of that people. My only anxiety is lest 
their sacred cause — their right to independent legislation — 
should be in the slightest degree tarnished or impeded by 
anytliing in which I have been the instrument. I am con- 
scious of the integrity of my purpose — I am conscious of the 
purity of my motives — I am conscious of the inestimable value 
of the object I had in view — the Repeal of the Union, I 
own to you I cannot endure the Union ; it was founded upon 
the grossest injustice — it was based upon the grossest insult — 
the intolerance of Irish prosperity. This was the motive that 
actuated the malefactors who perpetrated that iniquity ; and 
I have the highest authority — the ornament for many years 
of that bench, but now and recently in his honorable grave — 
that the motive of this proceeding was an intolerance of Irish 
prosperity. Nor shall I leave that on his word alone. I 
have other authorities for it, with which I shall trouble you 
in the course of as brief, for I am exceedingly anxious to make 
as brief an address ^s I possibly can. I am not here to deny 



SPEECH IN HIS OWN DEFENCE. 193 

anything I have done, or here to palliate anything that I have 
done. I am ready to reassert in court all I have said, not 
taking upon myseK the clumsy mistakes of reporters — not 
abiding by the falhbihty that necessarily attends the report- 
ing of speeches, and, in particular, where those speeches are 
squeezed up together, as it were, for the purposes of the news- 
papers. I do not hesitate to say that there are many severe 
and harsh things of individuals, and clumsy Jokes, that I would 
rather not have said, but the substance of what I have said I 
avow, and I am here respectfully to vindicate it ; and as to all 
my actions, I am ready, not only to avow them, but to justify 
them. For the entire of what I have done and said was done 
and said in the performance of, to me, a sacred duty — the en- 
deavoring to procure the restoration of the Irish parliament. 
If I had no other objection to it I would find one in the period 
in which it was carried — it was a revolutionary period. The 
nations of Europe were overwhelmed by a military power, in- 
spired as it was by the infidel philosophy of France. At that 
period, almost every country in Europe was torn from its legiti- 
mate sovereignty — ^people were crushed — princes were banished 
— ^kingdoms and states were altered — ^it was a revolutionary 
period ; but alas ! a day of retribution and restoration has 
come for every other country but this. What has since hap- 
pened has fortunately restored the natural, or, at least, the 
political order of things in other countries — every country has 
its day of retribution and restoration, save only Ireland. Ire- 
land alone remains under the influence of the fatal revolution 
of that period, and you are assembled in that box to prevent 
justice being done to Ireland, as it has been to other coun- 
tries. 

This is not the time to discuss how you were put into that 
box — nor is this the place to get any remedy on that subject. 
I do not assert the Attorney-General had anything to do with 
that matter but what the law allowed him to do, and over 
which the court had no control. If wrong had been done, the 
remedy lay elsewhere ; when, if right was violated, it wiU be 
redressed — but here I am put to address you, without either 
discourtesy or flattery, as to the species of tribunal I am about 
to offer my arguments. It is quite certain there is considera- 



194 SELECT SPEECHES OE DANIEL CONNELL. 

ble discrepancy of opinion between you and me ; there can be 
no doubt of that — there is a discrepancy on one subject, and 
one of the utmost importance — we differ as to the Repeal of 
the Union. If you had not so differed, you would not be in that 
very box. You also differ with me on another most important 
subject — and that is on the subject of our rehgious behef. If you 
had been of the same faith as I, not one of you would be in 
that box ; and these differences are perhaps aggravated by the 
fact, that I am not only a Cathohc, but one who was most suc- 
cessful — and I can say it without boasting, for it is a part of 
history — in putting down that Protestant ascendency of which, 
perhaps, you are the champions — certainly you were not the 
antagonists, and in estabhshing that rehgious equality against 
which some of you contended, and against which aU of your 
opinions were formed. This is a disadvantage which does not 
terrify me from the performance of my duty. I care not what 
may be the effect as regards myself — I care not what punish- 
ment it may bring down — I glory in what I have done — I 
boast of what I did. I am ready to defend aU I have suc- 
ceeded in accomphshing. I know I am, gentlemen of the jury, 
in your power, but I know I am in the power of jurors of 
honesty and integrity, and I appeal to you as such. There 
are points on which we essentially differ. The first is the 
Eepeal of the Union — and you are all aware of my former 
conduct respecting Cathohc Emancipation. But you are there 
to administer justice — you are there to do what is right be- 
tween all parties ; and while I remark these things, it is not 
because I despair of your doing me justice. I would, how- 
ever, prefer not being harassed with the thought that by any 
possibility, either by the infirmity of human nature, or from 
any cause, other ingredients should enter in. 

Gentlemen, I now have done with you. I pass on to the 
consideration of the case itself. I come to the prosecution. 
It is a curious prosecution — it is a strange prosecution — it is 
the strangest prosecution that was ever instituted. It is not 
one fact, or two facts, or three facts. No ; while that for 
which our criminal law is most lauded is the simphcity with 
which a particular fact is tried, so that the jury may be dis- 
embarrassed from everything else — ^here it is the history of 



SPEECH IN HIS OWN DEFENCE. 195 

nine months you are to go through — here you have a mon- 
strous accumulation of matter flung before you ; and I defy 
the most brilliant understanding that ever ornamented a court 
or jury to disengage what may be of importance from that 
which may induce an unfavorable result, but which ought not, 
legally, to do so. The great difficulty is, to bring such a quan- 
tity of matter before you. In doing so your memory fails ; 
and it is worse than a* failure, as it is apt to recoUect what 
may be but strong and striking, while it may forget that which 
should make an important consideration — those parts which 
are explanatory and mitigatory. 

I arraign this prosecution, not in the spirit of hostility or 
anger, but on constitutional principles — the impossibility of 
any jury so disengaging that mighty mass of matter now be- 
fore it as to find out what was really the question to deter- 
mine. Let me now see whether I can help you in that. I 
will endeavor to see how much of the affirmative there is in 
this prosecution, and how much there is of negative qual- 
ity in it — that is, what it is, and what it is not. The entire 
strength of this prosecution consists in that cabahstic word, 
" conspiracy." If I look to any dictionary for its import, or 
if I ask common sense, I find it means a secret agreement 
among several persons to commit a crime. That is the com- 
mon sense view of it, as weU as its dictionary meaning — a pri- 
vate agreement among several persons to commit a crime ; but 
this word, in recent times, has been taken under the special 
protection of the bar. They have not only considered it an of- 
fence to conspire to commit a crime, but they have put two 
hooks into a line — so to divide the subject as both committal 
of crime that they spell out conspiracy in such a way as to 
attain that end. I do not think there is much of justice in 
the second branch, if at aU brought into consideration, unless 
it was so clear and so distinct as to substantiate the offence. 

We will now take this conspiracy ; let us see whether there 
are any negative qualities in it as to the evidence produced by 
the Crown. It is admitted by the Crown itself in this case, 
that there was no privacy — no secrecy — no definite agreement 
whatever to bring it about — but, above all, there was no pri- 
vate agreement, no secret society, nothing concealed, nothing 



196 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

even privately communicated — there was no private informa- 
tion ; nay, not one private conversation — every tiling was 
open, avowed, proclaimed, published. A secret conspiracy r 
which there was no secrecy about ! — all lay openly pro- 
claimed, and openly published — whether in the Dublin Even- 
ing Mail, or Dublin Evening Post, for all has been raked out 
of that secret abyss of all secret channels of communication, 
the pubHc newspapers. Eeally, it is quite too harsh a thing 
for one to be called on to defend himself against a conspiracy 
so perpetrated, committed in open day, and committed by 
pubhc announcement, with the ringing of bells, to know who 
would come as witnesses to the conspiracy. To be a conspiracy 
there must be an agreement ; but whether private or not, that 
is another question, but I insist on it there ought to be some- 
thing to conceal, and will admit that it should not be in the 
presence of the legal authorities, nor in the presence of her 
Majesty's Attorney-General, the Solicitor-General, or any of 
the learned sergeants. Eeally, see what a monstrous thing 
it is to call that a conspiracy which everybody in the world 
might know, and which all might witness. Some persons had 
formed the arrangements ; it was occasionally attended by 
Mr. Such-a-one one day, and by Mr. Such-a-one another day ; 
on the third day Mr. Barrett was there ; Mr. Duffy once or 
twice, thus spelling out the affair in that way. In common 
sense, could it be endured that such should be denominated a 
conspiracy. A conspu'acy ! Where was this agreement made 
— when made — how was it made ? Was it made in winter or 
summer — in spring or autumn ? When was it attended — on a 
Sunday or a week day ? Can you tell me the hour of the day, 
or the month, or the day of the month ? Can you tell me any 
one of the three quarters of the nine months ? Who was by, 
who spoke, who made the arrangements, who moved and sec- 
onded the resolutions ? 

Gentlemen of the jury, I appeal to your common sense — to 
your reason. Place yourselves for one moment in my position, 
and you were addressing a Catholic jury ; look for one mo- 
ment and see — how ? — with what ?— I will not say with indig- 
nation — but with what higher feelings of conscious integrity 
you would laugh with scorn the daring to find you guilty of a 



SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF HIMSELF. 197 

conspiracy, under such circumstances. You have not in this 
case the sUghtest shadow of a concoction ; you have not one 
particle of that which should belong to a charge of this sort. 
I do not even know, from this proceeding, whether I was pre- 
sent at this conspiracy or agreement, either public or private. 
Ought I not, then, to have the advantage of an alibi ? If you 
were to run over the nine months of this conspiracy, it would 
be a kind of toss-up to know whether I was there or some- 
body else — to know who was there — and to find out whether 
this agreement was in writing, or whether it was a mere parole 
agreement. And I want also to know has any one told you ? 
If there were an action in the Nisi Prius Court, and you were 
the jury in the box, and that the question was one of plain 
contract, is there any possibility of your not finding a verdict 
on a contract which was given in evidence ? But here there 
is nothing of the sort. I remember it being once said to a 
judge by a lawyer — " O, my lord, it would not be evidence on 
a ten pound promissory note, but it might be evidence in a 
criminal case." Your lordship might have heard that such a 
thing was once said, but I will only say to you that it would 
not be evidence, as to the <£10 contract ; they should get the 
definition — if right, I should be in the bill of particulars. 
Such a definition — an agency and conspiracy — and not be at 
last in the bill particulars. I do not mean to profit by the 
circumstance, but I say it is not in the bill of particulars ; 
and therefore if they had attempted to give it in writing, 
without giving it in the bill of particulars, they would un- 
doubtedly have shut out from the beginning all evidence. 
Shall they escape your honest view on such a subject as that 
of consciences, and if there had been a conspiracy it would be 
proved, and that the only reason why it is not in all its de- 
tails, and all its circumstances is because it did not exist. 
What are they to do ? The Attorney-General, forsooth, leaves 
it to you ; the agreement ought to be in reality ; it is an im- 
aginary one, and you are to vote that the imagination is a 
reaUty, and find me guilty because you imagine. 

I do not wish to speak disparagingly of the Attorney-Gene- 
ral — no man is less inclined to do so than I am — on the con- 
trary, my lords, I admit the ingenuity with which he stated 



198 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

the case. I admit the talent he displayed, the industry he 
evinced throughout. He was eleven hours at it, eleven mortal 
hours. "When did he tell you of the conspiracy ? " Oh !" said 
he, " wait awhile, wait till I come to the close, and when I do 
come to the end, go back to the beginning, and find out the 
conspiracy ;" and allow me to say, that if any gentleman could 
have found out the conspiracy, it would have been the Attor- 
ney-General. Yes, he did take eleven hours in throwing out 
that garbage to the jury. " There," said h.», " is the Pilot, the 
Nation. Here are speeches and pubUcations — now find out 
the conspiracy. The case is good enough for you to make out 
the conspiracy." I remember a case on the Munster circuit 
in which the celebrated Mr. Egan was engaged for the 
defendant. It was stated by Mr. Hoare, a gentleman of dark 
appearance, who made a very powerful speech on the merits 
of the case. Mr. Egan said — " Oh, I will make such another — 
I will." At once — " Gentlemen of the jury," he commenced. 
Now, he was sure of his jury, and all he wanted was an excuse 
for them. " Gentlemen of the jury," said he, " surely you will 
not be led away by the dark obhvion of a brow." One of the 
counsel who sat near him said, " Why, Egan, that is non- 
sense." " To be sure it is," was the reply, " but it will do for 
the jury." So the eleven hours are good enough for you. Oh ! 
it is nonsense — ^it is criminal nonsense — to call that conspirac}' 
which takes eleven hours in the development. Hardy was 
tried for constructive high treason. At the anniversary which 
always took place in celebration of the integrity of the jury, 
one who had been a juryman in the case was in the habit of 
attending ; when his health was drunk he always made the 
same speech, to the effect that he was not accustomed to public 
speaking, and in the course of such speech he would say — 
" Mr. Chairman, I will tell you why I acquitted Mr. Hardy. 
The counsel was eleven hom's stating the case ; there were 
eight or nine days occupied in giving evidence. Now I know 
that no man could be guilty of treason when the case could 
take so many words and such a length of time to prove, so I 
made up my mind to acquit." 

Now what necessity could there be for the Attorney- Gene- 
ral to ransack newspapers to make out a case of conspiracy 



SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF HIMSELF. 199 

against tlie Crown ? If tlie case were a good one, depend on 
it the Attorney-General lias talent enough to tell you all in 
one hour and a haK at the utmost. Give me leave to say — 
and by what I am about to state I mean to signify no disre- 
spect to the counsel for the Crown — I consider myself, although 
I am not here with my wig and gown, a barrister stiU, and I 
have a fellow-feeling for the profession ; but give me leave to 
say that the Attorney-General unquestionably would, could he 
have done so, have shown you the when, the how, the manner, 
he would have pointed out aU the particulars. But what has 
he shown you ? Nothing ; and he leaves the case in your 
hands, thinking that it is quite good enough for you. There 
is no privacy or secrecy even imputed. You have nothing to 
conjecture — there is nothing supposed to have happened in 
private — nothing at all. The entire is before you, and, there- 
fore as you know all, I say that there never was a case in 
which the Attorney- General so signally failed as in the 
present. 

You may remember when this trial was about to commence ; 
the whole country was fuU of rumors. It was said that- some- 
thing dark and atrocious would come out— that there was a 
clue to everything. Why, my lords, I do solemnly assure you 
that no less than seven gentlemen have been pointed out to 
me after this mode — " There is Mr. So-and-so, one who was 
seen with Mr. Kemmis's officer." " That man was at the Cas- 
tle." " That man is a barrister, whose office i& not far distant 
from yours in Merrion Square." " Don't," it was said, " asso- 
ciate with Mr. So-and-so ; keep him at arm's length ; he is 
treacherous ; he is betraying." I repeat it, that no less than 
seven persons have suffered in their characters exceedingly 
by the allegation that they were in fault ; the answer was — 
" They have nothing to betray — much good may it do them ; 
they wiU invent." Now, it is an acknowledged fact, that 
informers, who have nothing to teU, invent. Now I ask, after 
all the rumors which have been afloat, did you not every one 
of you expect, when you came here, to learn something — did 
you not expect to have some plot discovered — to hear of some 
secret organization — to haar some private conversation regard- 
ing these traversers given in evidence, influencing and altering 



200 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL o'CONNELL. 

the nature of their pubHc acts ? If you were so fortunate as 
not to expect this, you certainly have not been disappointed ; 
but if you entertained the expectation, was ever disappoint- 
ment so complete and unmitigated ? Go where you please, 
and you will hear it said, " Oh ! is that all the Attorney-Gene- 
ral has done? has he nothing more to say? We knew all 
that before !" A conspiracy ! this is a conspiracy ! Aye, gen- 
tlemen, what has become of the dark designs, the stratagems, 
the foul consph-acy, the government chimeras dire of the 
imagination? What has become of them? They are van- 
ished. There is nothing new, nothing disclosed — there is 
nothing to be concealed. It would have been the duty, I 
don't deny it, it would have been the duty of the government 
to prove conspii-acy if such a thing existed. Gentlemen of the 
jury, they had inclination to prove, but they could not. You 
perceive with what interest they forward every part of this 
case, but above all, the strong and striking interest they have . 
in discovering evidence of real facts, of existing facts — with 
what interest they hunt out the conspirators, and foUow them 
to their caves and recesses. Every power, all that influence, 
and wealth, and authority could do, has been exerted. The 
exjDectation of promotion has been ventured — ^promotion in the 
constabulary : every temptation held out, but all in vain — for 
one very plain and simple reason — there was nothing to be- 
tray, and you know that. Well, then, what is the evidence ? 
If there was nothing new, let us see what the old evidence is. 
" The hfe," they say, " of an old coat is a new button." What 
does the evidence consist of ? First, meetings ; next, newspa- 
pers. They spell out an undefined conspiracy — that conspi- 
racy existing in the imagination — a conspiracy without posi- 
tion or time ; and to prove that conspiracy, they produce ac- 
counts of meetings and volumes of newspapers. 

We wiU consider each of these consecutively. Fu'st of aU, 
you allow me to make this observation, as there is nothing se- 
cret. I ask you what could tempt me, an old lawyer, to enter 
pubhcly into a conspiracy ? I boasted that I kept the public 
free from the meshes of the law — I say that I boasted of 
this. You have heard the statement read at least twenty 
times. I boasted of preventing men from violating the law 



SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF HIMSELF. 201 

Now, do any of you believe that, after this, I could enter into 
a public conspiracy ? You might say, if there was something 
private — something secret, you might then say, " the old law- 
yer thought he would be secure of his co-conspirators ;" but 
there is nothing secret. Under all all these circumstances you 
may, perhaps, have a more terrible opinion of me than those 
who I will venture to say know me better. You know me 
principally through the medium of the calumnies and abuse 
Heaped upon me by those parties against whom I am op- 
posed, but there is not one of you can consider me such a 
blockhead, such an idiot, as that I should publicly conspire to 
ruin the cause which is nearest to my heart — to ruin a cause 
which has been the darling object of my ambition— that I 
should ruin the prospect of that for which I refused to go on 
the bench, and the offer of being the Master of the KoUs. 
It is a question whether I did not refuse the Chief Baronship 
before ever it was offered — but there is no question that I did 
refuse the offer of the Mastership of the KoUs. 

Gentlemen, I know that I have but a short time to labor in 
my vocation here, and that there is an eternity on which I 
must soon enter. I approach that judgment which cannot 
be long postponed, and do you beheve that under such cir- 
cumstances I would be guilty of that with which I stand 
charged? Ah, no, you do not think I would have the 
cruelty, the foUy, to enter into such a conspiracy. You do not 
beheve I would have the absurdity to enter into that conspi- 
racy. As Irish gentlemen, put your hands to your hearts, and 
say do you beheve it ? I am sure you do not. Pardon me if 
I have made too free, but I wiU say there is not one of you 
can speU a conspiracy out of all that was laid before you dur- 
ing the eleven hours in which the Attorney-General was ring- 
ing changes on that word, going backwards and forwards, from 
meeting to meeting, and from poHceman to pohceman, in col- 
ored clothes and out of colored clothes — not one of you can 
beheve that any such conspiracy ever existed. I proclaim, 
firmly, you cannot beheve it. I know your verdict may 
imprison me, and shorten the few days yet before me, but it 
cannot take from me the consciousness that I am entitled to 
your acquittal, and that there is not a man of you who would 



202 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

pronounce a verdict of guilty that would not liimseK be con- 
scious of its being a — mistake. Perhaps what the Attorney- 
General wants you to beheve is, that I was a conspirator 
without knowing it — that I fell into a conspiracy as a man 
falls into a pit might, without knowing it was there. This 
was in the open day. I saw the pitfall. Everything was 
clear, and if you beheve anything against me, you must be- 
heve I was a conspirator without knowing it — a conspu-ator 
ignorant of conspiracy — and that is the question you are 
selected to try. In the technicahty of law, I would say that 
even in that case there could be no guilt, for there can be no 
guilt without guilty intention : but I scorn to make points of 
law — as a matter of common sense this is plain and obvious, 
and, I trust I may say irresistible. 

Oh, this is a curious invention — this sweeping conspiracy of 
the Attorney-General ! It has been so powerfully put to you 
akeady that I shall not repeat it at any length, that there 
would be an end to every great movement for the amehoration 
of human institutions if you were to concede to the Attorney- 
General's conspiracy, which has neither been stated nor 
proved. It is a new invention made at this side of the water. 
Some exceedingly sagacious person here first dreamed of it ; 
and you were to be put as it were into a sleep witli this incu- 
bus — this imaginary conspiracy — conspu'acy resting on your 
consciences and minds. But why was it not sooner invented ? 
There was the slave trade — would that ever be abohshed if the 
Attorney-General's doctrine of conspiracy had been enforced 
as law ? Would it ever have been abolished if the judges of 
the King's Bench had given this doctrine of conspiracy the 
sanction of their authority ? The advocates of the abohtion 
of the slave trade had their pubhc meetings, they had their 
monster meetings — they had their aggregate meetings — they 
had their private meetings ; they pubhshed the guilt of the 
West India planters, and the cruelty of the slave-owners; 
they made themselves bitter, unrelenting enemies by so do- 
ing ; for it is astonishing how much mahgnity arises from that 
inherent, unhappy propensity in man for power and authority. 
There never was a more formidable party than that which was 



SPEECH IN HIS OWN DEFENCE. 203 

arrayed against the slave-owners. Tliey might have looked 
in the newspapers, and found every species of guilt charged 
against them by Wilberforce and others. "Why was not WH- 
berforce charged with conspiracy ? That man who wrote his 
name on pages of the most brilhant history and humanities of 
men, who will be revered as long as worth, generosity, and 
piety are in the world. Oh ! he might have stood, as the 
humble individual before you stands, accused of conspiracy, 
because he sought to put an end to the thralldom of the 
slaves. The venerable Clarkson, who is still ahve, might also 
be charged with conspiracy, and thus rendered rmsafe in his 
honored old age. 

Ah! gentlemen, do not presume to interfere between hu- 
manity and its resources. Do not venture to arrest the pro- 
gress of any movement for the amelioration of the institutions 
of the country. Do not attempt to take away from your fel- 
low subjects the legitimate mode of effecting useful purposes 
by pubHc meetings, pubhc convassing — speaking bold truths 
boldly and firmly. Shut not men up in dark corners — drive 
them not into concealment — send them not back into conspi- 
racy, for then they would really conspire. In the name of 
Wilberforce and Clarkson I conjure you to dismiss from your 
box with honest and zealous indignation every attempt to pre- 
vent the millions from seeking peaceably and quietly to obtain 
an amehoration of existing institutions. There may be a Ht- 
tle ingenuity displayed in reference to this comparison of the 
present movement with that for the abolition of slavery, and a 
distinction may be taken. There is a distiuction, but the prin- 
ciple is the same. 

The next conspiracy was for the aboHtion of the slave 
trade. I rejoice that I was a sharer in that conspiracy. I 
care not though the gloom of a prison should close upon me, 
my heart rewards me with the consideration that humble, un- 
gifted, and undistinguished as I am, I had the honor to be - 
long to that conspiracy by which the slave trade was abol- 
ished. I attended a meeting for that purpose, and poured 
out, perhaps with more talent than the inspiration of Uberiy 
could ever give for anything else, my indignant load of con- 



204 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

tempt on those who practiced slavery and trampled under foot 
the humanity and kindliness of our nature. I had a share in 
that movement. Oh, how would they have stared if this doc- 
trine of conspiracy was sooner invented, and the slave bound 
forever, till somebody with milk and water accents — with 
mild tea-table talk endeavored to persuade some one to abol- 
ish it, until some one went to America and spoke soft things 
to the owners of the negroes, and having, in as gentle a way 
as possible, insinuated the atrocities practiced towards the 
slaves, then, by and by to coax the owners, and win upon 
them to consent to the abohtion of slavery. Oh, gentlemen, 
it was the calling down of public indignation — the rousing of 
all that was vu'tuous in the public mind, and that Heaven de- 
scended spirit of persevering, open, bold humanity that shook 
off the fetters of the negro, and re-estabhshed him in free- 
dom. What would become of reform in parliament if such 
demonstrations of pubhc opinion had not been made ? Was 
there a man among the Whig aristocracy that did not approve 
of it, not join in such demonstrations ? Were there not great 
meetings held? You have heard of the Birmingham meet- 
ings, and hundreds of other meetings for the purpose of ob- 
taining parhamentary reform. What reform in parhament 
could be obtained without such meetings ? Would the addi- 
tional reform promised in the Queen's speech ever be carried, 
if England did not assemble in her countless thousands? 
And in Ireland the agitation for Kepeal had already extract- 
ed promises of good for Ireland, even from those who had 
been the enemies of the restoration of the Irish parliament. 

At the time of the agitation for Cathohc emancipation, the 
most eminent lawyer of the period — and the Attorney-Gen- 
eral will not think that I pay him no respect when I say he 
was his superior, certainly his equal. He was an eminent 
lawyer, and had a strong, and perhaps conscientious, antipa- 
thy to Catholic emancipation. I do beheve there was no 
more decided or honest opponent of that measure than Mr. 
Saurin. He thought the law was violated by that agitation. 
He prosecuted some of those engaged in it. He was defeated 
in one trial, and he succeeded in another. But would he ever 



SPEECH IN HIS OWN DEFENCE. 205 

dream — ^would he in the very wildness of imagination think of 
turning the efforts made for Catholic emancipation into a con- 
spiracy ? I was prosecuted for words spoken. My friend on 
my left (Mr. Shell) was prosecuted for words spoken, but the 
Attorney- General never thought of violating the constitution 
by turning those efforts for emancipation into a conspiracy. 
Yet had not we our county meetings — our simultaneous meet- 
ings ? Did not, on the 30th of January, 1829, aU the Catho- 
lics of all the parishes in Ireland meet ? Was that evidence 
of a conspiracy ? Upon one day every parish in Ireland met. 
On one day they proclaimed a determination to persevere 
till they obtained rehgious equality. No man ever dreamed 
of turning that into a conspiracy. It was reserved for our 
time — it was reserved for our day — ^it was reserved for the 
glory of the present Attorney-General to have found out that 
which none of his predecessors could possibly discover. 

Gentlemen, at the present moment a very serious question 
is in agitation in England — the Corn Law League. I care not 
what your opinions are with regard to that question — I mean 
no disrespect — they say the object of that league is to obtain 
cheap bread for the poor, and an increased market for labor. 
I do not mean to argue the point with you ; we have enough 
of our own. They have held many meetings, they have used 
the boldest language, and the Eev. Mr. Fisher has accused 
them of inciting to assassination and incendiarism. We are 
free from that accusation, we are free from the slighest imputa- 
tion, and is this case to be sent over to England to put down 
that glorious struggle ? and is the attempt to give cheap bread 
to the poor to be turned into conspiracy? Oh no, gentle- 
men, no ! The English are safe in the glorious integrity of their 
jury box ; there won't be a single juryman sworn to try them 
who differs with them in opinion — there won't be a juryman 
sworn who even differed with violence upon any principle with 
the traversers. No ; the Enghshmen are safe — I was wrong 
in saying they were in danger — the Englishmen are safe in the 
protection of their jury box — and do you, gentlemen, protect 
us as the Enghsh protect them. Indeed, it is manifest, if the 
Attorney-General triumphs in this case, no great grievance 
can be redressed. 



206 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL o'CONNELL. 

When autliority and power are interested it requires a more 
cogent argument than justice to obtain relief, and it is only 
obtained by the power of pubhc demonstration, and the accu- 
mulated weight of pubhc opinion. A French author says — I 
do not quote him as an authority, for no man hates French 
infidelity and French republican opinions more than I 
do ; but a French author says that " You cannot make a 
revolution with rose water." He would make it with blood 
— I would make it with public opinion, and I would put a little 
Irish spuit in it. But I come to the menagerie of evidence 
which sustains this case. I told you there were two classes 
of evidence — if I am not wrong in using the words monster 
meetings and newspaper pubhcations — we will take each of 
them. I am not here to deny that these meetings took place. 
I admit that they were held. I admit that the people attended 
them in hundreds and hundreds of thousands, but it has been 
said that the magnitude of these meetings would alone make 
them illegaL I do not discuss that question. I do not give 
it weight enough to do so. But I again admit that they took 
place, and I will ask you, was any Hfe lost at any of those 
meetings? You will answer no! not one! Was any man, 
woman, or child injured ? You will answer no ! unanimously 
no ! Did an accident happen to any Hving thing so as to in- 
jure it in the slightest degree ? Was there a single female, 
young or old, exposed to the shghtest indelicacy ? Was there 
one shilling's worth of property destroyed at any one of those 
meetings ? You wiU answer me, unanimously no ! Oh, but I 
forgot — there was a pohceman in colored clothes who de- 
scribed a ferocious assault made by the people coming in from 
Carlow, which very nearly overturned the gingerbread and ap- 
ple stands of the old women — and the amount of violence 
pei-petrated was the overturning of some gingerbread stands. 
If there had been any violence committed would we not have 
heard of it ? would it not have been proved by the poHcemen 
or magistrates who attended ? 

Oh, gentlemen, it is ridiculous — that is, it is the prosecutions 
which are so. There was no violence, no battery, no assault, 
no injury to property, not the least violation of morahty, or 
even of good manners. Not one accident happened at one of 



SPEECH IN HIS OWN DEFENCE. 207 

those meetings ; not even a casual accident ; and if I incited 
the people, and had them ready for rebellion, would they have 
been thus restrained? and would they not have committed 
outrages by which their feelings would have been manifested ? 
But no, so completely were they devoid of ill-feeling, so com- 
pletely had every harmonizing influence sway over them, that 
gTown mothers and young mothers carried their infants with 
them as their best and surest protection. Oh, it would delight 
you to have seen them ! The men stood back for them to pass ! 
the mothers and daughters knew that they had their husbands 
and brothers there, and so help me Heaven ! I withdraw the 
violence of expression, and I say, that there could not have 
been a more convincing and triumphant evidence of the total 
absence of irritated feelings, than the kind of feeling which 
they evinced. I turn boldly and say, the world does not pro- 
duce a country where such meetings could take place. They 
could only occur among this calumniated people, who, accord- 
ing to the Times, are " a filthy and felonious multitude." 
Tes, there are no people on the face of the earth, except the 
Irish people alone, who could afford such a specimen of moral 
dignity and elevation. They have been educated to it — forty 
years have they been so — the Emancipation educated them, 
and now they are sublimed into peaceful determination. They 
will not be ruffled by anything which may have happened in 
this court. They will abide your verdict ; they may disap- 
prove of it if it is unfavorable, but they will not be guilty of 
the shghtest violation of the law. But was any one intimi- 
dated by those meetings ? They could have produced magis- 
trates or policemen, one by one, to prove their intimidation. 
They could have produced the most timid, either in pantaloons 
or petticoats, to prove there was intimidation. "With the most 
ample means of proof, there is the greatest neglect of evidence. 
My lord, I appeal to your lordships, if there was one particle 
of intimidation — is there one particle of such evidence before 
you? And is it not thoroughly certain that it is so only be- 
cause such evidence is not in existence ? Gentlemen of the 
jury, it is not that alone — it is not purely inferential — the 
pohce were at the meetings ; they might have asked if any 
one complained to them — whether the most timid person ia 



208 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

the neighborliood or vicinage expressed alarm or apprehen- 
sion. They asked them no such question ; it had been an- 
swered abeady. 

Now, my lord, there was another feature in those meetings, to 
which I shall beg to call your attention. There was not one of 
those meetings at which any mandate from authority was dis- 
regarded ; no proclamation was disregarded, no magisterial 
warniag resisted in the lightest degree. There was no message 
or personal intimation from any justice of the peace treated 
with disregard — ^no police inspector, or sub-inspector, or con- 
stable disobeyed. Eecollect that, my lords — ^remember that, 
gentlemen of the jury. There is not the sKghtest evidence of 
even the smallest disregard of legal authority. If we were 
seditious, why did we not get some warning ? Why was there 
not a proclamation issued against these meetings? Oh! but 
there was a proclamation at length. I do not hke to enter 
upon any angry topic ; but that proclamation was immediately 
obeyed. You have no evidence of any conspiracy in any one of 
them, no evidence of anything but a ready submission and 
obedience to the law. Conspiracy — shame on those who in- 
vented such a term, as applied to men laboring, as we were, 
in the sacred cause of our country's hberty — obeying the laws, 
committing no violence. No, my lords, no. We have had 
many misfortunes in this country, many afflictions, many 
things to endure. Oh, gentlemen, your verdict will not be an 
additional one. It will be such a verdict as will calm the 
troubled waters. If those meetings were tranquil before, why 
there is no need of it. If the language was harsh or violent 
your verdict will soothe and soften it. Even the excuse of 
violent language they shall never have again. No, gentlemen, 
they were not illegal meetings, they were meetings, as I will 
show you, suited to the purpose they had in view. If it were 
at one, or two, or three, or ten of them that tranquiUity had 
prevailed, it would, perhaps, seem casual, but at every one of 
them the behavior of the people was the same. The entire 
thirty-seven included in the indictment come within the same 
catalogue. It could have been by nothing but design, when 
you accumulate the number, that the same peaceful demeanor 
prevailed at all of them. The government knew of them ; why 



SPEECH IN HIS OWN DEFENCE. 209 

was not their illegality previously imputed to them, if it ex- 
isted? I am not one of those who would insinuate or say 
that the Attorney-General meant to urge them into criminahty, 
in order that he might pounce upon them. I say no such 
thing — I would do him more justice. He did not previously 
interfere, because there were no grounds for a prosecution — 
there was nothing to warrant his interference. That is his 
defence. And I do not attach any criminality to him for not 
having interfered with them before. 

[Mr. O'Connell here had a short conversation with Mr. Shiel, 
after which the learned gentleman resumed.] 

I am told that I used an equivocal word — I said that those 
meetings were quiet by design. I repeat it. The design pre- 
existed long before one of them was held — the design to be 
quiet and peaceable existed, and it will continue to exist. 
There was no such arrangement for any particular meeting. 
That was the education which I spoke of the Irish people 
having received — the education that the only certain way to 
establish their rights, and to obtain valuable amelioration and 
free institutions, was by peaceable conduct and obedience to 
the laws. I ask you, gentlemen, what evidence is there of a 
conspiracy from what has passed at any of these meetings ? 
I leave it to your conscience — to your integrity, to answer the 
question. What care I what your pohtics are — you will an- 
swer before your Maker, for the verdict you pronounce — I 
leave the responsibility to you. This is one part of the con- 
spiracy, and the next is the publications in the newspapers. 
Do not imagine I am going to detain you in canvassing all the 
phrases and sentences that have appeared in these papers. I 
am not. You have been powerfully addressed on that topic 
already. I shall take up the general nature of the evidence 
of those newspapers, from which you are called upon to 
fabricate a conspiracy. I. submit that, with the exception of 
what is proved to have been delivered by me, the evidence of 
these newspapers is. no evidence against me, unless the con- 
spiracy is first proved. And see what a circle that would lead 
you into. Are you to find the evidence of conspiracy from 
the newspapers ? The newspapers are no evidence against me 



210 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

unless I be first proved to be a conspirator. Be that as it may, 
I shall leave it to the court as a matter of law, but I leave to 
you the weight, the worth of the evidence, should that evidence 
go to you at aU. Suppose it does, what is there in it against 
me ? — what is its substantial weight against me ? Is there any 
proof that I ever saw one of those newspapers ? Is there any 
proof of any connexion between me and those newspapers ? It 
will appear by the dates that when some of the harshest pas- 
sages in them were printed I was not in town — I was attending 
those meetings in the country, and it was moved that at the 
association I distinctly disavowed that any newspaper was the 
organ of it. But it is said that we circulated these newspa- 
papers. See what the fact is. Those who subscribed a certain 
amount allocated a portion of it, according to our rules, to the 
purchase of a newspaper, and they were entitled to any paper 
they might select. The evidence is not that we selected any 
newspaper for them, but they ordered any one they pleased ; 
and bear in mind at the same time that we proclaimed that 
not one of them was the organ of the association. It is said 
that these newspapers contained libels. If they did why were 
they not prosecuted ? They were answerable for it under the 
law of libel. That should be our protection, if there were 
hbels in them. The Attorney-General was competent to in- 
stitute a prosecution. It was not our duty to examine them — 
it was his. But the fact is, the Attorney-General would have 
prosecuted every one of those newspapers long ago if he 
thought it worth his while. 

Every great newspaper " we," imagines himself a man of 
great importance ; but when once these newspapers are read 
— if read at aU — they are forgotten ; and, I would venture to 
say, that not a particle of what is charged here as pubhshed 
by them would be thought of now if it was not for these trials. 
They are ephemeral productions — ^we are accustomed to 
them — they are either read and forgotten, or not read and 
passed by. But what is it they are charged with ? Exciting 
the people to violence and tumult. Did any one of them 
produce such an effect? Was there any sort of violence 
among the people ? You, gentlemen, have to decide whether 
that pohtical problem I have sought to solve — ^whether the 



SPEECH IN HIS OWN DEFENCE. 211 

political theory I have sought to realize, that which has been 
the leading principle of my political lifers one in its nature 
to be considered fairly, honestly, and liberally. Yes, gentle- 
men, if you thus regard it you will take the whole tenor of my 
past life into consideration before you come to a conclusion as 
to the verdict which you ought to return, and you will form 
your judgment by a reference to the great and leading princi- 
ples of my political career. 

It appears to me that the Attorney-General himself, if I 
did not misconceive the drift of his observations, admitted 
the peaceable nature of my intentions ; and of this there cer- 
tainly can be no doubt, that the newspapers which have been 
given in evidence against me are full to overflowing with my 
admonitions to the people to observe the laws and to yield 
the most implicit obedience to everything having the shape 
and semblance of legal authority. Evidence the most con- 
vincing has been adduced, even by the Crown, to demonstrate 
what the great principle was upon which the Eepoal move- 
ment was founded and designed. It has been proved to you 
that this maxim received universal acceptation among us— 
that the man who commits a crime gives strength to the 
enemy. This sentiment was printed upon flags and banners 
— it was attached to aU our documents — it was inscribed upon 
our platform, and painted on the walls of the association. 
It was universally acknowledged among us as the cardinal 
maxim of our political hves, and was the topic of our con- 
versation. We left nothing undone to impress upon the minds 
of those who joined the movement that the man who com- 
mitted an ofience against the law gave strength to whoever 
might be the enemy of our cause. Such was the principle 
that we proclaimed. It may be said that it was one that 
savored of hostility ; but if so, it had only a stronger effect on 
that account. You have heard again and again of my as- 
sertion that the most desirable of all political ameHorations 
were purchased at too dear a price if they could only be ob- 
tained at the expense of human blood. That is the principle 
of my pohtical career ; and if I stand prominent among men 
for anything, it is for the fearless and unceasing announcement 
of that principle. 



212 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

From the day when first I entered the arena of poHtics until 
the present hour I have never neglected an opportunity of 
impressing upon the minds of my fellow-countrymen the fact, 
that I was an apostle of that pohtical sect who held that lib- 
erty was only to be attained under such agencies as were 
strictly consistent with the law and the constitution — that 
freedom was to be attained, not by the effusion of human 
blood, but by the constitutional combination of good and wise 
men — ^by perseverance in the courses of tranquilHty and good 
order, and by an utter abhorrence of violence and bloodshed. It 
is my prudent boast, that throughout a long and eventful life 
I have faithfully devoted myself to the promulgation of that 
principle, and, without vanity, I can assert, that I am the first 
j)ubHc man who ever proclaimed it. Other pohticians have 
said, ' win your hberties by peaceful means if you can,' but 
there was a arriere pensee in this admonition, and they always 
had in contemplation an appeal to physical force, in case 
other means should prove abortive. But I am not one of 
these. I have preached under every contingency, and I have 
again and again declared my intention to abandon the cause 
of Repeal if a single drop of human blood were shed by those 
who advocated the measure. I made the same principle the 
basis for the movement in favor of Catholic Emancipation ; and 
it was by a rigid adherence to that principle that I conducted 
the movement to a glorious and triumphant issue. It is my 
boast that Catholic Emancipation, and every achievement of 
my pohtical life, was obtained without violence and blood- 
shed ; and is it fan-, I ask you, gentlemen, that you should be 
called upon at this hour of the day to interrupt a man who 
has laid that down as the basis of his pohtical conduct, and 
who at no period of his existence was ever known to deviate 
from the maxim ? Is it right that men of honesty and intelli- 
gence should be called upon to brand now as a participator in 
conspiracy the man who has been preaching peace, law and 
order during his whole life, and has invariably deprecated and 
denounced the idea that the objects of his pohtical life were 
to be attained by an appeal to violent means ? 

Gentlemen, I belong to a Christian persuasion, with whose 
members it is a principle of doctrinal behef that no advantage 



SPEECH IN HIS OWN DEFENCE. 213 

to cliurcli or state — no, not even Heaven can be sought to be 
attained at the expense of any crime whatsoever ; that no sin 
is to be justified or paUiated by any account of advantage, 
however enormous, that may possibly be obtained by its com- 
mission. If there were in that bos a single member of my 
own religious persuasion there would be no necessity for my 
impressing this fact upon your minds, for he could tell you that 
he professed that same doctrine in common with myself. All 
my life I have studiously endeavored to model my pohtical 
conduct according to the standard of that maxim of my reli- 
gious belief, and, therefore, should you now be called upon to 
do your judgment and common sense the violence of believing 
that I could proclaim one thing and practice another, I fear- 
lessly assert that there is no circumstance of my life, from 
my birth to the present hour, which can warrant you in 
doubting the sincerity of my professions. It will appear from 
reference to the newspapers that have been given in evidence 
— and even though there were no newspapers, the fact is so 
notorious as to admit of no dispute — that no man ever pos- 
sessed so much of the confidence of the Irish people as I. No 
man enjoyed it so unremittingly, and in so large a degree. I 
have obtained the confidence of all classes of the Cathohc 
laity, and of the poor Catholics alone whose condition might 
be ameliorated by any charge but of the middle and higher 
classes also. I have also the honor of enjoying the confidence 
of the Catholic clergy, and the Cathohc episcopacy, and to 
what am I to attribute the possession of their good graces 
unless to the assertion of this principle and to the unswerving 
fidehty with which through all the vicissitudes of my pohtical 
hfe I have invariably adhered to it. How long could I possess 
their confidence if I were the base deceiver I am pictured ? 
Not an hour. But I possess then- confidence, because they 
are thoroughly convinced of the sincerity and integrity of pur- 
pose with which I have announced my sentiments. 

I am here surrounded by my countrymen, who have con- 
fided their cause to my management, for no other reason than 
that they have the fullest possible reliance on the sincerity 
with which, during a period of forty years, I have proclaimed 
the doctrine that the man who committs a crime injures the 



214 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

cause he espouses, and strengthens the hands of those who 
are its antagonists. My whole life is a refutation of the accu- 
sation that I am insincere ; and is the invidious task now to 
be assigned to you, gentlemen, of branding your countrymen 
as fools and dotards — men who patronize hypocrisy, and who 
for near half a century have suffered themselves to be befooled 
and deluded by empty pretences ? The public will not be- 
lieve it — England will not beheve it — nor will any enlightened 
country in creation beheve it. I am here pleading before the 
European world. I am here pleading the cause of my country 
before a jury of Protestant gentlemen, in presence of the kings 
and people of the universe, and with what amazement wiU they 
not gaze upon you if by a verdict which doubts for a moment 
the sincerity of my political professions, you brand as fools 
and dotards milHons of your Cathohc fellow countrymen, and 
with them, many, very many Protestants of the greatest intel- 
ligence and the highest possible respectability. No, you can- 
not for a moment question the honest sincerity with which I 
have ever advocated that glorious principle, the advocating of 
which was the pride of my youth, the glory of my manhood, 
and the comfort of my declining years. I feel I have not done 
you justice in pressing this topic at such length upon your 
consideration. Such prolixity was unnecessary ; for I am 
sure you are wholly incapable of taking such a view of my 
conduct as that insisted on by the Crown. 

The only farther observation which I will offer upon this 
branch of the case is merely to state that I doubt whether my 
sincerity in this respect has ever been questioned, even by the 
most implacable of my enemies. I do not think that it was 
ever pubhcly impugned, and certain I am that it ought never 
to have been impugned either pubhcly or privately. It is ut- 
terly impossible for me to beheve that after having been so 
successful in my endeavor to obtain popular rights by means 
purely consistent with justice, humanity, the law, and the con- 
stitution, I could now fling to the winds every principle of my 
bygone hfe, and assume the character and play the part of a 
conspirator. Nothing in my public conduct, I must again re- 
peat, could justify such a suspicion. Nay, I fearlessly aver, 
there are incidents in my pubhc hfe which give the he to any 



SPEECH IN HIS OWN DEFENCE. 215 

thing like tlie entire of it ; but allow me to read for you the 
concluding passage, because it turns on a topic I am now 



[The honorable and learned gentleman read the passage alluded 

to.] 

Is that sectarianism ? Is that preferring the interests of a 
party or portion of the people to the nation at large ? Secta- 
rianism ! Why, gentleman, you cannot but be aware that the 
cause of the Protestant dissenters of England was warmly 
advocated by me — ^that it was I drew up the petition in favor 
of the Enghsh Protestant Dissenters — ^that that petition was 
signed by twenty-eight thousand Catholics, passed at meetings 
of the association, and afterwards at the great aggregate 
meeting of Catholics, and that petition which I drew up was 
not upon the table of the House of Commons six weeks when 
the Protestant Dissenters of England were emancipated. I 
therefore treat with contempt and indignation the idea of 
sectarian difference ; and again, throughout the entire volumes 
that have been presented to you, has there been one word of 
a bigoted description found among them ? 

I have made more speeches than any other public man that 
ever existed — I have been more abused than any other man, 
but amidst all their calumnies they never flung upon me an 
accusation of bigotry against my feUow beings of any other 
persuasion. I have been calumniated in everything else — ^in 
that I have been spared, and why? because the foUy and 
futility of the calumny was so excessive that even my calum- 
niators spared me on that point. Sectarianism, therefore, is 
out of the question ; but what was our mode ? Legal and 
peaceable, and constitutional proceedings. I need not remind 
you again that I possess the confidence of the Irish people. 
I possessed it with a full repetition of my determination that 
all should be peaceable, with my full declaration that one sin- 
gle act of violence would detach me from the Eepeal agitation. 
But it has been said I made violent speeches. Has any vio- 
lence proceeded from me ? If I have made violent speeches 
would it not be fair to give me a recent and speedy opportu- 
nity of seeing how far the reports of those speeches were 



216 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

science, if you can, that man is a hypocrite, who, without any- 
thing in the world to move him but adherence to his prmciples, 
flung away the instrument that would tarnish his cause, how- 
ever useful it might be. 

Another thing in my public life was that I opposed, at the 
risk of my popularity, and loss of popularity, the present sys- 
tem of poor-laws. With the influences I possess, could not I 
have roused the poverty of Ireland against its property, and 
insisted that all that were poor should be fed by all that were 
rich, as others did ? No ; I saw the danger of such a proceed- 
ing. I was taunted by many a sincere friend — sneere.d at by 
men who have joined me again. No, no ; I consulted my con- 
science, and that conscience told me that the real nature of 
the provision makes more destitute than it relieves — that its 
machinery must be the great burden on the property of the 
country. But, my lords, since it became law, I have not given 
it any opposition. I have allowed the experiment to be tried, 
and those who were most inimical before have vowed that I 
was right, and they were wrong, and I am ready to ameliorate 
it, and assist its working if I can. 

Gentlemen, you also recollect it is given in evidence the 
manner of my answer to young Mr. Tyler's speech and letter ; 
you saw from that and from the speech given in evidence by 
Mr. Bond Hughes ; and now, my lords, as I have mentioned 
that name, I think it right to say that as I was one of those 
convinced that that gentleman had willfully sworn what was 
not true, I am glad to have mentioned his name, because it 
affords me an opportunity I am proud to take of stating, that 
I never saw a witness on the table who gave his evidence more 
fairly than Mr. Bond Hughes, and I am thoroughly convinced 
that the contradiction in his evidence was a mistake that any 
honest man might fall into. It is not j)art of this case, but I 
am sure your lordship don't think me wrong in making this 
public avowal. 

Gentlemen, it appears by his report also, how emphatically 
I informed the Americans that we were anxious for sympathy 
from them, but that we would take no part, in the sHghtest 
degree, disparaging of our allegiance. But that is put stiU 
more strongly when you recoUect the denunciations I made of 



SPEECH IN HIS OWN DEFENCE, 217 

the American slave owners. Large sums of money were sent 
from the American slave-holding states — the remittances were 
in progress — money was in progress of collection in Charles- 
ton, South Carolina ; but did I mitigate my tone, or moderate 
my language in condemning the principle of slavery? Did 
I not denounce the slave owners as enemies of God and of 
man — as culprits and criminals ? Did I not compare associa- 
tion with them to association with pickpockets and felons? 
Did I not use the most emphatic language to express my de- 
nunciation of the horrible traffic in human beings — of all the 
immorality, and all the frightful horrors that belong to that 
system ? Oh, if I was a hypocrite, would I not have passed 
over the topic with a few soft words, and have accepted their 
sympathy. Is there hypocrisy in my pubhc sentiments that 
no amehoration in any pubhc institution can be worth one drop 
of blood? 

Gentlemen, you have in the newspapers, also, that the demo- 
cratic party in France, headed by Monsieur Ledru Rolhn, 
offered us sympathy and support. It is a considerable party — 
it is a powerful party — it is the party that hates the Enghsh — 
the party most of all ferocious against England, a hatred which 
arose from the blow their vanity got at Waterloo. You have 
my answer to that offer. Did I seek his support, or the sup- 
port of his party ? Did I mitigate and frame my answer in a 
way that I should appear unwilling to accept that support, but 
reaUy allow it ? No ; I took the firm tone of loyalty — I reject 
their support — I refused the offer ; I cautioned him against 
coming over here, for we would do nothing inconsistent with 
our loyalty; and is that the way in which my hypocrisy is 
proved ? Gentlemen, it was not that party in France alone 
that I defied. Even at their present monarch I have hmied 
my defiance. To be sure, the Attorney-General, with great 
ingenuity, introduced a report of the secret committee of the 
House of Commons in Ireland, in 1797, and he said we were 
acting on that plan. They were looking for French assist- 
ance — ^they had Irish emissaries in France — they had prob- 
ably persons representing the French here — acting on the 
plan ; imitating the conduct of the United Irishmen in 1797 ! 
Oh, gentlemen, it was directly the reverse. 



218 SELECT SrEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

It may be said I speculate on the restoration of the elder 
branch of that family — Henry V., as he is called. I would be 
very sorry to wait for a Eepeal of the Union till that occurs, 
not that I disparage his title — for my opinion is, that Europe 
wlU never be perfectly safe until that branch of the Bourbon 
family be restored imder Hberal institutions. But I refused 
any, even the slightest assistance from that party. I hurled 
the indignation of my mind against the man that would force 
the children of France to be educated by infidel professors. I 
am not entering into the topic farther than you have seen by 
these reports of my antagonism to the French government. 

There is another matter in my life — my opposition to the 
Chartists. Kecollect, gentlemen, that when the Repeal Asso- 
ciation was in full force, the Chartists were in insurrection in 
England — that they were entering in hundreds and thousands 
into the manufacturing towns of England — ^recollect, gentle- 
men, that there is something fascinating to all the poorer 
classes in Chartism. Oh ! if I was playing the hypocrite, 
would I not have been mitigated in my tone res pectiug- them? 
I did denounce them. I kept the Irish in England from join- 
ing them. The very moment a Chartist subscribed to the 
funds of the association his money was handed back to him, 
and his name struck off our hst. Now, if my object was pop- 
iilar insurrection, good Heaven ! would not any man in my 
situation have wished to have strength ? There was no oath . 
to be taken — ^no danger of the penalties of the law — ^yet I dis- 
countenanced Chartism. And, my lord, I do firmly declare, 
that is my conscientious conviction, that if I did not interfere, 
Chartism would have spread from one end of Ireland to the 
other. Gentlemen of the jury, these were the societies I suc- 
ceeded in driving from Ireland, and I am to be charged with 
a conspiracy for this ! 

Another point to which I will caD. your attention is this — it 
has been my constant aim to pay the most devoted allegiance 
to the Queen ; you have it in evidence, and you have heard it 
read out of all the newspapers, that the name was treated 
with the utmost respect, attention, regard, and dehght, in 
every place, by the Irish people. I have never made a speech 
vliicli did not breathe the most dutiful and affectionate loyalty 



SPEECH IN niS OWN DEFENCE. 219 

to her person, crown, and dignity. I stand here and repeat, I 
never made a disloyal speech ; I always made a difference be- 
tween the Queen and her ministers, and the Attorney-General 
has no right to say that I ever uttered one particle of disloy- 
alty in arraigning the speech alluded to. When I spoke, I 
made the distinction between the minister and the sovereign, 
and I say there is not a particle or taint of disloyalty in the 
observations I made. I answered that speech, not as the 
speech of the Queen, but of the minister of the day, and I 
say there is no taint of disloyalty in it. I am come to a time 
of life when she can do nothing for me ; and yet I am sure 
there is not a man in the court who could infer that I meant 
disloyalty. 

In one thing I think the Attorney-General did not act fairly 
to me ; and it does afflict me that I should be charged with 
disloyalty to the sovereign in the manner as he has sought to 
fasten it on me. In speaking of the ministry, the word Judy 
occurred, and then the Attorney-General tells you I called the 
Queen a fishwoman. That speech had no reference to the 
Queen at aU — don't beheve it ; I feel angry at it. That speech 
had reference to the minister alone, and to him I applied the 
term " Judy," and nothing else, and it is utterly false that I 
used the word to the Queen ; and I here disclaim, abjure, and 
disavow the man who would be capable of using such language 
to the sovereign. 

No matter what I may be accused of, I have never been 
accused of disloyalty or disaffection to my sovereign, and I 
repeat I never did any such thing as the Attorney-General has 
stated to you. When I did use strong language, I have 
always distinguished between the Queen and her ministers. 
Gentlemen, I fear I have detained you rather longer on this 
point than I had intended, but I have to judge of my case by 
referring you to my public conduct which is fully before you. 
I may have talents, and whatever they were I must now say, 
in the dechne and evening of my life, that my long and ardent 
desire was breathed for the liberties of my country. 

Gentlemen, it was said the meetings, when they took place, 
had some object ; so they had : the Repeal of the Union. Was 

I dehberately say it was 



220 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL o'CONNELL. 

not ; no, it was tlie most useful that could possibly be bad for 
the benefit of this country. I say there is not a man in this 
court, the neutrahty of the court alone excepted, that ought 
not to be a Repealer, and I think before I sit down I will make 
you all Repealers. I will show it is your duty to join the Re- 
peal cause, and then I am sure you wiU have pleasure in doing 
so. I mean, in the fii'st place, to show you the destraction 
caused in this country by the Enghsh parliament— that it had 
fi-om the most remote period watched this country with a nar- 
row jealousy. I will give you some evidence regarding the 
woolen manufacturers of this country. It is a long time ago, 
and occurred in the reign of a King whose actions you are not 
inclined to condemn. I wiU show that the settlement of 1782 
was to be a final adjudication and estabhshment of the Irish 
parliament forever. In the nest place, I wiU show you the 
great prosperity of Ireland subsequent to that period. I will 
next show you that the Union was founded in the grossest 
injustice and fraud— I will show you the distress that followed 
the Union statute — I wiU show you the ill-treatment of Ire- 
land by England, which is a matter of history so well known, 
that I will not detain you on the point. Yet, being brought 
here by the Attorney-General, my defence is, that I am not 
looking for what is injurious to the country, but for what 
would be of the greatest possible benefit to this country. I 
have a right to this ; for I have represented the county of 
Clare, with 250,000 inhabitants ; I have rexDresented Waterford, 
with 300,000 inhabitants ; I have represented Kerry with 
260,000 inhabitants ; I have represented Meath with 300,000 
inhabitants ; and I now stand here, the proud representative 
of the county of Cork, with her 730,000 inhabitants ; and I 
feel it a duty I owe to the country, to state that I am seeking 
what will benefit her inhabitants. I twice represented the 
city of Dublin, and I feel gratitude to the Irish people for the 
confidence reposed in me, and I here stand up to demand for 
her just rights and privileges. I first propose to show the 
misgovernment of Ireland by England, and I will do so from 
a French author. He was a historian, and one of the literati 
of France, and I will give you his description. Hear what he 



SPEECH IN HIS OWN DEFENCE. 221 

says.. It is from Thierry's History of the Conquest of Eng- 
land by the Normans, 3d vol., p. 430 : 

" Tlie conquest of Ireland by the Anglo-Normans is perhaps the only- 
one which has not been followed by gradual amelioration in the condition 
of the conquered people. In England the descendants of the Anglo-Sax- 
ons, though unable to free themselves from the dominion of the con- 
queror, advanced rapidly in prosperity and civilization. But the native 
Irish, apparently placed in similar circumstances, have for five centuries 
exhibited a state of uniform decline. And yet this people are endowed 
by nature with great quickness of parts, and a remarkable aptitude for 
every description of intellectual labor. The soil of Ireland is fertile and 
adapted to cultivation ; yet its fertility has been equally unprofitable to 
the conquerors and the conquered, and the descendants of the Norman, 
notwithstanding the extent of their possessions, have become gradually 
as impoverished as the Irish themselves. This singular destiny, which 
presses with equal weight upon the ancient inhabitants and the more re- 
cent settlers of Ireland, is the consequence of their proximity to Eng- 
land, and of the influence which, ever since the Conquest, the govern- 
ment of the latter country has constantly exercised over the internal affairs 
of the former. " 

There is a disinterested and impartial history giving you 
this melancholy picture of the state of things, and you see it 
is all owing to the baneful influence of the English govern- 
ment on this country. The next authority which I shall quote 
is not one that would be found in the same ranks with the 
last — it is Mr. Pitt. In speaking of the commercial proposi- 
tions of 1785, I find he says : 

*' The uniform policy of England had been to deprive Ireland of the 
use of her own resources, and to make her subservient to the interests 
and the opulence of the English people." 

That is not my language, gentlemen ; they are the words of 
Pitt, avowing that the pohcy of England had always been to 
use Ireland for her own purposes. I wiU read another author- 
ity of more consideration with you — it is that of the Lord 
Chief Justice Bushe, dehvered in parliament in 1799 : 

" You are called upon to give up your independence, and to whom are 
you called upon to give it up ? To a nation which for six hundred 
years has treated you with uniform injustice and oppression." 

These, recollect, are the words of Lord Chief Justice Bushe, 
and not mine. 



222 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL o'CONNELL. 

" The treasury bench startles at the assertion — non metis hie sermo est. 
If the treasury bench scold me, Mr. Pitt -vN-ill scold them — it is the asser- 
tion in so many words in his speech. Ireland, says he, has always been 
treated with injustice and ilhberahty. Ireland, says Junius, has been 
uniformly plundered and oppressed. This is not the slander of Junius, 
nor the candor of Pitt — it is histoiy. For centuries has the British par- 
liament and nation kept you dowTi, shackled your commerce, and parar 
lyzed your exertions ; despised your characters, and ridiculed your pre- 
tensions to any privileges, commercial or constitutional. She has never 
conceded a point to you which she could avoid, or granted a favor which 
was not reluctantly distilled. They have been all wrung from her like 
drops of her blood." 

The words are not mine, gentlemen. 

"And you are not in possession of a single blessing (except those 
which you derive from God) that has not been either purchased or ex- 
torted by the virtue of your own parhament from the iUiberaUty of Eng- 
land." 

In 1798, wlien a government pamphlet was pubhshed by- 
Mr. Secretary Cooke, which first broached the subject of the 
Repeal of the Union, he says : 

" A Union was the only means of preventing Ireland from growing too 
great and too powerful." At the same time admitting — "When one na- 
tion is coerced to unite with another, such union savors of subjection." 

I will quote again from Lord Chief Justice Bushe : 

" In denouncing England's intolerance of Ireland's prosperity, during 
the debates on the Union, he used the following language : "I strip 
this formidable measure of aU its pretensions and all its aggravations : I 
look on it nakedly and abstractedly, and I see nothing in it but one 
question — will you give up the country ? I forget for a moment the un- 
principled means by which it has been promoted — I pass by for a moment 
the unseasonable time at which it has been introduced, and the contempt 
of parliament upon which it is bottomed, and I look upon it simply as Eng- 
land reclaiming, in a moment of your weakness, that dominion which you 
extorted from her in a moment of your virtue — a dominion which she uni- 
formly abused — which invariably oppressed and impoverished you, and 
from the cessation of which you date all your prosperity. It is a measure 
which goes to degrade the countiy, by saying it is unfit to govern herself, 
and to stultify the parhament by saying it is incapable of governing the 
country. It is the revival of the odious and absurd title of conquest; it is 
the renewal of the abominable distinction between mother country and 
colony which lost America ; it is the denial of the rights of nature to 
a great nation from an intolerance of its prosperity." 



SPEECH IN niS OWN DEFENCE. 223 

From the commencement I told you I would prove that it 
was hatred of the prosperity of Ireland ; and if he who ut- 
tered that opinion were here to-day, he would avow it. These 
topics were almost forgotten, and I am obliged to the Attorney - 
General for having reminded me of them. I will read another 
document to prove that the English poHcy has always been 
against the amalgamation of the Irish people. It is an extract 
from a letter from Primate Boulter to the Duke of Newcastle, 
which is dated Dublin, January 9th, 1724 : 

"I liave made it my business to talk with several of the most leading 
men in parliament, and have employed others to pick up what they could 
learn from a variety of people : and I feel by my own and others' 
inquiry that the people of every religion, country, and party heze, are 
alike set against Wood's halfpence, and that their agreement in this has 
had a very unhappy influence on the state of this nation, by bringing 
on intimacies between Papists and Jacobites and the Whigs who before 
had no correspondence with them ; so 'tis questioned whether (if there 
were occasion) the justice of the peace could be found who would be 
strict in disarming the Papists." 

Mark, gentlemen, the paternal feeling of the government of 
that day. " It spurned, as an ' unhappy influence,' the intima- 
cy between the Papists and Whigs." Gentlemen, have I not 
now proved what I said — ^by the authority of Thierry, of Pitt, 
of Bushe, and of Primate Boulter ? And I conjure you to re- 
member that opinion of Bushe — that the oppression of Ire- 
land arose from an intolerance of her prosperity. And he ut- 
tered that sentiment uncontradicted. I will next bring your 
attention to the transactions of 1782 — that period which must 
be famihar to your recollections — ^the one bright spot — the one 
green oasis in the desert surrounding it. The transactions of 
1782 were of consummate advantage to England. She was then 
assailed upon every side. America had first rebelled, and 
afterward separated from her. She wanted Ireland. Being 
without troops to garrison her citadels and secure her safety, 
the gentlemen of Ireland armed. But did they think of sepa- 
ration ? No ; they asserted their right to an independent leg- 
islature and free trade, and they obtained both, for it was not 
safe to refuse them. The adjustment which then took place 
between the two countries was declared to be a final one. The 



224: SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL o'CONNELL. 

English House of Lords said so, the Commons said the same, 
the Lord Lieutenant of L'eland announced it, and the two 
British houses of parhament declared it was a final adjust- 
ment. And how was it got rid of ? I will show you. [Mr. 
O'Connell read the document.] 

Such were the principles in which that great settlement was 
brought about ; and do you know, or did you know in your 
lives a single individual who was a Volunteer in 1782 that to 
the last moment of his life did not boast of having participat- 
ed in that mighty and most salutary change ? It was glorious 
to Ireland to preserve their allegiance, and join it with Uberty — 
to ascertain constitutional rights, and obtain legislative inde- 
pendence. The connexion with England was stronger — the 
connexion was never disputed, but proclaimed by the patriots 
of that day, and the connexion was preserved by that measure. 

I am asked whether I have proved that the prophecy of Mr. 
Fox was reahzed, that the prosperity that was promised to 
Ireland was actually gained by reason of her legislative inde- 
pendence. Now, pray listen to me. I wiU teU you the evi- 
dence by which I shall demonstrate this fact. It is curious 
that the first of them is from Mr. Pitt, again, in the speech he 
made in 1799, in favor of the resolutions for carrying the 
Union. If he could have shown that Ireland was in distress 
and destitution — that her commerce was lessened — that her 
manufactures were diminished — that she was in a state of suf- 
fi3ring and want, by reason of, or during the legislative inde- 
pendence of the country — of course he would have made it his 
topic in support of liis case, to show that separate legislatures 
had worked badly, and produced calamities and not blessings ; 
but the fact was too powerful for him. But his vicious inge- 
nuity availed itseK of the fact, which fact he admitted ; and 
let us see how he admitted it. He admitted the prosperity of 
L'eland ; there was his reasoning. Now mark it — " As Ire- 
land," he said, " was so prosperous under her own parliament, 
we can calculate that the amount of that prosperity will be 
treble under a British legislature." He fii'st quoted a speech 
of Mr. Foster's in 1785, io these words — " The exportation of 
Irish produce to England amounts to two millions and a half 
annually, and the exportation of British produce to L'eland 



SPEECH IN HIS OWN DEFENCE. 225 

amounts to one million." Instead of saying you are in want 
and destitution, unite with England, and you wiU be prosper- 
ous — he was driven to admit this. Ireland is prosperous 
now with her own parliament, but it wiU be trebly prosperous 
when you give up that parhament, or have it Joined with the 
parhament of England. So absurd a proposition was never 
uttered ; but it shows this, how completely forced he was to 
admit Irish prosperity, when no other argument was left in 
his power, but the absurd observation I have read to you. He 
gives another quotation from Foster, in which it is said : 

"Britain imports annually £2,500,000 of our products, all, or very 
nearly all, duty free, and we import almost a million of hers, and raise a 
revenue on almost every article of it." 

This relates to the year 1785. Pitt goes on to say : 

"But how stands tlie case now [1799] ? The trade at this time is 
infinitely more advantageous to Ireland. It wiU be proved from the 
documents I hold in my hand, as far as relates to the mere interchange 
of manufactures, that the manufactures exported to Ireland from Great 
Britain, in 1797, very little exceeded one million sterling (the articles of 
produce amount to nearly the same sum) ; whilst Great Britain, on the 
other hand, imported from Ireland to the amount of more than three 
millions in the manufacture of linen and linen yarn, and between two 
and three millions in provision and cattle, besides corn and other articles 
of produce." 

That, said Mr. Pitt, was in 1785 — three years after her legis- 
lative independence — ^that was the state of Ireland. Have you 
heard, gentlemen, that picture, that description ? You have 
heard that proof of the prosperity of Ireland. She then im- 
ported little more than one miUion's worth of Enghsh manu- 
facture ; she exported two and a half millions of Hnen and 
hnen yarn, and adding to that the million of other exports, 
there is a picture given of her internal prosperity. EecoUect 
that we now import largely English manufactures, and that 
the greatest part of the price of those manufactures consists 
of the wages which the manufacturer gives to the persons who 
manufacture them. Two million five hundred thousand worth 
of hnen and yarn were exported, and one milHon of other 
goods. Compare that with the present state of things. Does 
not every one of you know that there is scarcely anything now 



226 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL o'CONNELL. 

manufactured in Ireland — that nearly all the manufactures 
used in Ireland are imported from England ? I am now show- 
ing the state of Irish prosperity at the time I am talking of. 
I gave you the authority of Forster (no small one) and of Pitt, 
of Irish prosperity during that time. I will give you the au- 
thority of another man, that was not very friendly to the peo- 
ple of this country — that of Lord Clare. Lord Clare made a 
speech in 1798, which he subsequently pubhshed, and in which 
I find this remarkable passage, to which I beg leave to direct 
your particular attention : "There is not," said his lordship, " a 
nation on the face of the habitable globe, which has advanced 
in civihzation, in agriculture, in manufactures, with the same 
rapidity, in the same period, as Ireland " (viz., from 1782 to 
1798). That was the way in which Irish legislative indepen- 
dence worked, and I have in support of it the evidence of Pitt, 
Poster, and Lord Clare : and Lord Grey, in 1799, talking of 
Scotland in the same years, says : 

"In truth, for a period of more than forty years after the (Scotch) 
Union, Scotland exhibited no proofs of increased industry and rising 
wealth." 

Lord Grey, in continuation, stated that — 

"TUl after 1748, there was no sensible advance of the commerce of 
Scotland. Several of her manufactures were not established till 60 years 
after the Union, and her principal branch of manufacture was not set 
up, I beheve, tiU 1781. The abolition of the heritable jurisdictions was 
the first great measure that gave an imj)ulse to the spirit of improvement 
in Scotland, Since that time the prosperity of Scotland has been con- 
siderable, but certainly not so great as that of Ireland has been within 
the same period. " ' , 

Lord Plunket, in his speech in 1799, in one of his happiest 
efforts of oratory, speaks of her as 

'a httle island with a population of four or five millions of peo- 
ple, hardy, gallant, and enthusiastic — possessed of aU the means of civih- 
zation, agriculture, and commerce, well pursued and understood ; a con- 
stitution fuUy recognized and established ; her revenues, her trade, her 
manufactures thriving beyond the hope or the example of any other 
countiy of her extent — witliin these few years advancing with a rapidity 
astonishing even to herself ; not complaining of deficiency in these res- 
pects, but enjoying and acknowledging her prosperity. She is called on 



SPEECH IN HIS OWN DEFENCE. 227 

to surrender tliem all to the control of — ^whom ? Is it to a great and 
powerful continent, to wliom nature intended her as an appendage — to a 
mighty people, totally exceeding her in all calculation of territory or 
population ? No ! but to another happy little island, placed beside her 
in the bosom of the Atlantic, of Httle more than double her territory 
and population, and possessing resources not nearly so superior to her 
wants." 

Here is the evidence of its failure as regards advantages to 
Ireland, and the benefit to be derived from Irish legislative 
independence : 

" Such is the right honorable gentleman's (Mr. Pitt's) infeKcity upon 
this great question, that the measure which was to be the remedy becomes 
the source of all distempers. Instead of quieting, he has agitated every 
heart in that country. The epoch from which was to begin the reign 
of comfort and confidence, of peace, and equity, and justice, is marked, 
even on its outset, by the establishment of that which rests every civil 
blessing on the caprice of power. Ill-starred race ! to whom this vaunted 
Union was to be the harbinger of all happiness, and of which the first 
fruit is martial law — or in other words, the extinguishment of all law 
whatsoever." 

Advantages to be expected from the independence of Ireland. 

17th May, 1782. 
" He desired gentlemen to look forward to that happy period when 
Ireland should experience the blessings that attend freedom of trade 
and constitution ; when by the richness and fertility of her soil, the in- 
dustry of her manufactures, and the increase of her population she 
should become a powerful country ; then might England look for power- 
ful assistance in seamen to man her fleets, and soldiers to fight her bat- 
tles. England renouncing all right to legislate for Ireland, the latter 
would most cordially support the former as a friend whom she loved. 
If this country, on the other hand, was to assume the power of making 
laws for Ireland, she must only make an enemy instead of a friend, for 
where there was not a community of interests, there the party whose 
interests were sacrificed became an enemy." — 2 vol. p. 60. 

Lord Chiee Justice. — I beg your pardon, Mr. O'ConneU, 
I am not able to bear the heat of the court. I would be sorry 
to incommode you, but it will be necessary to open one of the 
windows. 

Mr. O'Connell. — ^Not at all, my lord. I will return in a 
moment. 



228 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL o'CONNELL. 

Mr. O'Comiell having been permitted ' ta withdraw for a 
short time, the court and jury retired for refreshment. 

The court having resumed, Mr. O'ConUell thus proceeded : 
When the adjournment took place I was in the act of reading 
to you several authorities showing how much Ireland pros- 
pered under her own independent parliament. I will now 
du-ect your attention to such documents as will tend to cor- 
roborate the facts contained in those I have already adverted 
to. You have heard that in 1810 a meeting was held in Dub- 
lin to petition the legislature for a Repeal of the Union. I 
will read an unconnected passage from a speech dehvered by a 
gentleman belonging to a most respectable house in this city. 
It is as follows : 

"Some of us," said lie, "remember tliis country as she was before -we 
recovered and brought back our constitution in tlie year 1782. We are 
reminded of it by the present period. Then as now, our merchants were 
without trade, our shopkeepers without customers, our workmen without 
employment ; then as now, it became the universal feeling that nothing 
but the recovery of our rights could save us. Our rights were recovered ; 
and how soon afterwards, indeed as if by magic, plenty smiled on us, 
and we soon became prosperous and happy." 

Let me next adduce the testimony of a class of citizens 
who, from their position, and the nature of their avocations, 
were weU calculated to supply important evidence on the state 
of Ireland, subsequent to the glorious achievements of 1782. 
The bankers of Dublin held a meeting on the 18th of Decem- 
ber, 1798, at which they passed the following resolutions : 

"Resolved — That since the renunciation of the power of Great Britain, 
in 1782, to legislate for Ireland, the commerce and prosperity of this 
kingdom have eminently increased. 

"Resolved — That we attribute these blessings, under Providence, to the 
wisdom of the Irish parhament." 

The Guild of Merchants met on the 14th of January, 1799, 
and passed a resolution declaring : 

"That the commerce of Ii-eland has increased and her manufactures 
improved beyond example, since the independence of this kingdom was 
restored by the exertions of our countrymen in 1782. 

"Resolved — That we look with abhorrence on any attemj)t to deprive 
the people of Ireland of their parhament, and thereby of their consti- 
tutional right and immediate power to legislate for themselves." 



SPEECH IN HIS OWN DEFENCE. 229 

I have in addition to these, from the most unquestionable 
authority (an authority incapable of deceiving or of being de- 
ceived), the relative increase in England and Ireland of the 
consumption of tea, tobacco, wine, sugar, and coffee, from 1785 
to the Union, which is as follows : 

Tea. — Increase in Ireland, 84 per cent ; increase in England, 45 per 
cent. 

From 1786 to the Union : Tobacco. — Increase in Ireland, 100 per cent ; 
increase in England, 64 per cent. 

From 1787 to the Union : Wine.— Increase in Ireland, 74 per cent ; 
increase in England, 22 per cent. 

Erom 1785 to the Union : Sugar. — Increase in Ireland, 57 per cent ; 
increase in England, 53 per cent. 

CojGfee. — Increase in Ireland, 600 per cent ; increase in England, 75 per 
cent. ._ ". 

I could multiply quotations. What need have I for so do- 
ing ? I have proved that no- country on the, face of the earth 
ever increased so rapidly in prosperity, as Ireland did from 
1782 to the Union. There is a cant phrase used for want of 
argument against us Eepealers — " you wish for dismember- 
ment of the empire." Reflect for one moment on the absurdity 
of saying this. Ireland, under her own parliament, with her 
own legislature, increased in prosperity to the incalculable ex- 
tent I have shown. Is it possible to beheve that that increase 
in prosperity would have had the least tendency to the dismem- 
berment of the empire, or separation from England? She 
was increasing iu prosperity during the connexion — she was 
increasing in prosperity during that period of legislative inde- 
pendence — why should she, then, think of dismemberment ? 
I can understand the term as applied to a period in which 
trade was declining- — in which the consumption of the articles 
I have mentioned greatly diminished — I can understand the 
term dismemberment, as applied to poverty and destitution, 
but it is absurd to talk about dismemberment, as apphcable to 
a period when there was an increase in prosperity, such as 
Ireland experienced under her own parHament again. 

Is it not melancholy to think that such an opening scene 
as that to which I have directed your attention should be 
closed at once? It really afflicts me to reflect that there 



230 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

sliould have existed — should I call him a monster — to disturb 
such increasing j^rosperity, to gain dominion, and actually, to 
use the words of Charles K. Bushe, " invoice the prosperity 
of Ireland." At the time when the great change took place 
the governing principle was anything but what it should be. 
The state Enghsh debt was considerably increased — the des- 
tiniction of the Irish parhament, and the means used to effect 
that destruction, were certainly those suited to the nature of 
so deleterious an object. You will find that all that the worst 
passions could effectuate was arranged, in order to effect the 
destruction of Ireland. 

The Attorney-General has referred you to the report of the 
select committee of the House of Commons in 1797. I will 
refer you to that of 1798. There I find that that which was 
stated by Lord Plunket as to the fomenting of the rebeUion 
until it should come to such a pitch that it might suddenly 
explode was the great means of bringing the bad passions of 
Ireland in play. It appears by that report that there was a 
person of the name of M'Guane, who was a colonel in the 
United Irishmen. He transmitted to government all meetings 
of the colonels, and of the country and provincial rebel com- 
mittees, from April, 1797, till May, 1798. These communica- 
tions were made through Mr. Clellann, land agent to Lord Lon- 
donderry. But while on this point I will direct your attention 
to another fact. In the Life of Grattan, vol. 2, p. 145 : 

" Shortly before his death Lord Clonmel sent for his nephew, Dean 
Scott, got him to examine his papers, and destroy those which were use- 
less. There were many relating to pohtics that disclosed the conduct of 
the Irish government at the period of the disturbances in 1798. There 
was one letter in particular which showed theu' dupUcity, and that they 
might have crushed the rebeUion ; but that they let it go on, on pur- 
pose, to carry the Union, and that this was their design. When Lord 
Clonmel was dying, he stated this to Dean Scott, and made him destroy 
the letter ; he further added that he had gone to the Lord Lieutenant, 
and told him that as they knew of the proceedings of the disaffected, it 
was wrong to permit them to go on ; that the government, having it in 
their power, should crush them at once, and prevent the insurrection. 
He was coldly received, and found that his advice was not relished. " 

So hero you have that which necessarily followed from not 
acting on the communication of M'Guane, and tlie fomenting 



SPEECH IN HIS OWN DEFENCE. 231 

of the rebellion for the purpose of carrying the Union. The 
entire country were against the measure, but they were con- 
trolled and checked by military power. Lord Plunket says : 

"I accuse the government of fomenting the embers of a lingering re- 
bellion ; of hallooing the Protestant against the Catholic, and the Catholic 
against the Protestant ; of artfully keeping alive domestic dissensions 
for the purposes of subjugation." 

I will now read a passage from a speech made by Lord 
Grey, in the year 1800, on the repugnance of the Irish nation 
to the Union : 

" Twenty-seven counties have petitioned against the measure. The pe- 
tition from the county of Down is signed by upward of 17,000 respect- 
able independent men, and all the others are in a similar proportion. 
Dublin petitioned under the great seal of the city, and each of the cor- 
porations in it followed the example. Drogheda petitioned against the 
Union ; and almost every town in the kingdom, in hke manner, testified 
its disapprobation. Those in favor of the measure jjrofessing great in- 
fluence in the country, obtained a few counter petitions. Yet, though 
the petition from the county Down was signed by 17,000, the counter 
petition was signed only by 415. Though there were 707,000 who had 
signed petitions against the measure, the total number of those who 
declared themselves in favor of it did not exceed 3,000, and many of 
these only prayed that the measure might be discussed. If the facts 
I state are true (and I challenge any man to falsify them,) could a na- 
tion in more direct terms express its disapprobation of a pohtical measure 
than Ireland has done of a legislative Union with Great Britain ? In 
fact, the nation is nearly unanimous, and this great majority is composed, 
not of bigots, fanatics, or jacobins, but of the most respectable of every 
class in the community." 

Mr. Bushe says : 

"The basest corruption and artifice were excited to promote the 
Union. AU the worst passions of the human heart were entered in the 
service, and all the most depraved ingenuity of the human intellect 
tortm-ed to devise new contrivances for fraud. 

" Half a million or more were expended some years since to break an 
opposition — the same, or greater sum, may be necessary now ; " [and 
Grattan added] " that Lord Castlereagh had said so in the most exten- 
sive sense of bribery and corruption. The threat was proceeded on — 
the peerage sold — the caitiffs of corruption were everywhere — ^in the 
lobby, in the streets, on the steps, and at the door of every parliamentary 
leader, offering titles to some, offices to others, corruption to all." 



232 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL o'CONNELL. 



Let me now request your attention to a description given by 
Plunket of the mode in which the Union was carried : 

" I will be bold to say that licentious and impious France, in all the 
unrestrained excesses which anarchy and atheism have given birth to, 
has not committed a more insidious act against her enemy than is now 
attempted by the professed champion of the cause of civiUzed Europe 
against a friend and ally in the hour of her calamity and distress — at a 
moment when our countiy is filled with British troops, when the loyal 
men of Ireland are fatigued and exhausted by their efforts to subdue the 
rebelhon — efforts in which they had succeeded before those troops ar- 
rived — while the habeas corpus act was suspended — while trials by coiu't- 
martial are carrying on in many parts of the kingdom — while the peojDle 
are taught to think they have no right to meet or to dehberate — and 
while the gi'eat body of them are so palsied by their fears or worn down 
by their exertions, that even the vital question is scarcely able to rouse 
them from their lethargy — in a moment when we are distracted by do- 
mestic dissensions — dissensions artfully kept aUve as the pretext of our 
present subjugation, and the instrument of our futui-e thralldom." 

Such, gentlemen, is the description given of the means by 
which the Union was carried. You know how much money 
was spent in the purchase of rotten boroughs. You know 
that three millions were expended in the actual payment of 
persons who voted for the Union. You know that there was 
no ofl&ce in the state, no office from the highest in the church 
to the lowest in the constabulary, that was not used to gain 
the desked purpose. There was more fraud, corruption, and 
iniquity employed in the carrying of the Union, than perhaps 
ever accompanied any public transaction. You wiU easily 
imagine the result. The Union has been destructive to Ire- 
land ; you feel this yom'selves ; you see it by the state of your 
streets ; you know it by the position of your commerce. Hav- 
ing shown you the general spirit of the Enghsh government 
— having adverted to the finahty as intended by the treaty of 
1782 — ^having shown you the extreme advantages and pros- 
perity of Ireland from the independence of her own parhament 
— having shown you the means by which the Union was car- 
ried, I come now to detain you for as short a time as possible 
by a reference to the evil results of that measure. In the year 
1794 the Irish debt was only seven milhons ; in the year 1798 
it had increased to fourteen millions. At the last-named 



SPEECH IN HIS OWN DEFENCE. 233 

period, the English debt was, at least, X350,000,000. At the 
time of the Union, Ireland owed 21 millions — England 446 
millions. What were the terms of the Union? They were 
these — that England was to bear forever the burden of these 
446 millions, and consequently, for its interest and charge, the 
burden of a separate taxation of seventeen millions annually, 
and that Ireland was not to be charged with that 446 millions 
at all for its principal or interest. But were these conditions 
comphed with? No; of course they were not, and Ireland 
now owes every penny of that stupendous sum. You are 
charged with every farthing of it; and, notwithstanding all 
the distinct promises of Castlereagh, the lands, the properties, 
the labors, the industry of the Irish people — aU, all are liable 
to be mortgaged for the debt. 

That you may have some idea of the mismanagement as to 
finances, and that you may know how much has been done to 
accumulate the Irish debt and to reheve England's, I refer 
you to the finance report of the public expenditure. Recollect 
that the Irish parhament had an interest in keeping the peo- 
ple of Ireland out of debt ; recollect that England owed 446 
millions, and that Ireland owed 21 millions. The Irish par- 
hament has been often assailed, but could there have been a 
more protective parliament, one that would tend to keep the 
country more free from debt ? The Enghsh parliament were 
throwing away money ; the Irish parliament were thrifty and 
economical, keeping down the pubhc debt. In 1822, Sir John 
Newport remonstrated. He says : 

"Ever since tlie Union, the imperial parliament had labored to raise 
the scale of taxation in Ireland as high as it was in England, and only 
relinquished the attempt when they found it was wholly unproductive. 
For twelve years he had remonstrated against this scheme, and had 
foreseen the evils resulting from it of a beggared gentry and a ruined 
peasantry. Ireland had four miUions of nominally increased taxes, 
while the whole failed as a system of revenue, and the people were 
burdened without any reHef to the treasury. It would be found, as it 
was in some countries, that the iron grasp of poverty had paralyzed the 
arm of the tax-gatherer, and limited in this instance the omnipotence of 
parhament. They had taxed the people, but not augmented the sup- 
pHes ; they had drawn on capital — not income ; and they, in conse- 
quence, reaped the harvest of discontent, and failed to reap the harvest 
of revenue." 



234 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

Lord Lansdowne, also, in making a motion on tlie state af 
Ireland in the same year, said : 

" The revenue in 1807 amounted to £4,378,241. That between that 
year and 1815, additional taxes had been imposed, which were estimated 
to produce £3,376,000 ; and that so far from an increase to the revenue 
having been the result, tliere was a great decUne — the revenue in 1821 
having been only £3,844,889, or £533,000 under the amount before the 
imposition of the three millions and a half of new taxes. He had, on a 
former occasion, stated it to be his opinion that the repeal of the taxes in 
Ireland would tend mainly to the revival of manufactures in that coun- 
try, and bringing it into a prosperous condition. It was objected to him 
on that occasion, that he sought, by giving large and exclusive advan- 
tages to Ireland, to raise her up into a manufacturing country, which 
should make her the rival of England and Scotland. While he dis- 
claimed any such intention, he feared Ireland was far indeed from any 
such prosperity. — Hansard, vol. xi., page 659. 

GENEKAIi A3STKACT OF TAXES EEPRaTjED OE KEMITTED SINCE 1800. 
GREAT BEITAIN. lEELAND. 

Customs £7,929,567 £635,200 

Excise, 14,093,638 368,530 

Stamps 443,634 152,609 

Post Office 130,000 13,193 

Property Duty. . 14,617,823 

Windows 1,577,773 179,403 

House 250,000 53,673 Hearth. 

Servants 472,061 42,988 

Carriages 391,796 71,086 

Horses 1,172,034 67,524 

Dogs 6,876 



£41,085,202 £1,584,211 

The taxes repealed or remitted in Ireland being one twenty-sixth part 
of those repealed in Great Britain." 

From Finance Keport of Public Expenditure, 1815 : 

" That for several years Ireland has advanced in permanent taxation 
more rapidly than Great Britain itself, notwithstanding the immense exer- 
tions of the latter countiy, including the extraordinary and war taxes, the 
permanent revenue of Great Britain having increased from the year 1801 
to the proportion of 16 J to 10 ; the whole revenue of Great Britain, includ- 
ing war taxes, as 21 i to 10 ; and the revenues of Ireland in the proportion of 



SPEECH IN HIS OWN DEFENCE. 235 

23 to 10. But in the twenty-four years referred to your committee, the 
increase of Irish revenue has been in the proportion of 461 to 10 !" — 
Sessioat 1814^15, vol. vi. 

" The annual amount of taxes repealed in England since the peace is 
£47,214,338, and the amount of taxes repealed in Ireland in the same 
period is £1,575,940, the taxes repealed or remitted in Ireland being 
one thirtieth of those remitted or repealed in Great Britain. Here is 
another table, composed of the same materials, and coming out of the 
same shop, makes the quantity repealed in England only £41,085,202, 
but it leaves the quantity repealed in Ireland the same number as men- 
tioned above, or a little more — it makes it £1,584,211." 

Gentlemen, -would that occur in an Irish, parliament ? If lie 
was accused of making Ireland what she ought to be in com- 
merce and manufactures, would he have disclaimed any such 
intention ? And what must have been that spirit of parha- 
ment toward Ireland, which made it necessary for a statesman 
to disclaim anything so atrocious, so outrageous, and so 
abominable, as the intention of making Ireland the rival of 
England and Scotland ? You perceive from this the fatuity 
and folly of transferring the management of your affairs to a 
parhament wherein it was considered a reproach to make Ire- 
land the equal of those countries, and how it is the imperative 
duty of every man who takes a part in politics to come for- 
ward and have a legislature which will not consider it a re- 
proach but a praise to endeavor to make Ireland the rival of 
every country in commerce and manufactures. This fact 
speaks trumpet-tongued, and with a voice that, I trust, will 
rouse you to just indignation against any attempt that may be 
made to put down the natural uprising — the peaceable and 
tranquil uprising — of the entire Irish people to obtain the 
benefit of a native parhament. There is a document here, 
which I cannot avoid quoting for you : 

" The enormous excess of British over Irish debt at the Union left 
the British minister no excuse for their consolidation, aud accordingly 
it was arranged that the two debts should continue to be separately 
provided for. The active expenditure of the empire (i. e., the expen- 
diture clear of charge of debts) was to be provided for in the propor- 
tion of two parts from Ireland to fifteen from Great Britain. These 
proportions were to cease, the debts were to be consolidated, and the 
two countries to contribute indiscriminately by equal taxes so soon as 



230 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL o'CONNELL. 

the said respective debts should be brought to bear to each other the 
proportions of the contributions, viz., as 2 to 15 ; provided, also, that the 
fiscal abiUty of Ireland should be found to have increased. Now, the 
2 to 15 rate of contribution was denounced at the time by Irishmen as 
too high for Ireland, and afterwards so admitted by the British min- 
isters themselves. Its consequence was to exhaust and impoveiish her 
to such a degi-ee, that her debt in sixteen years increased 230 per cent., 
while the British only increased 66 per cent. This disproportionate 
and unjust increase of the Irish debt brought about the 2 to 15 propor- 
tion between it and the British debt.." 

It is deliglitful to me to have an opportunity of stating these 
facts in a place from which I know they will be extensively 
circulated. 

"Advantage was taken of that single branch of the contingency con- 
templated in the Union Act, although the other branch of the contin- 
gency — viz., the increase of Ireland's abihty, had not only occurred, but 
by the confession of the English ministers themselves, in 1816, the very 
contrary had occurred — namely, Ireland had become poorer than before. 
Advantage, we say, was taken of that single branch of the contingency 
to consolidate the debts, to do away with all measure of proportionate 
contribution, and place the jaurse of Ireland, without restriction or limit, 
in the hands of the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, thenceforward 
to take from it, and apply as he liked, every penny it did then and 
might at any farther time contain, and rob Ireland of all chance of bene- 
fit from any surplus of revenue thenceforward and forever." 

Here we find that England was increasing the taxation of 
Ireland at the rate of X4,000,000 XDer annum, and such was the 
state of Ireland, that instead of this new taxation producing one 
sixpence of revenue, the actual precedent revenue fell ,£500,000 
in the ensuing year. The debt of Ireland increased 230 per 
cent., while that of England increased only 60 per cent. Can 
it be possible that any one will say that that increase was 
necessary. "What prosperity can you have under such a state 
of things ? The moment you have any prosperity it will be 
converted into English revenue. The moment you are able to 
bear a new tax, it will be used not only to pay off your own debt, 
but to maintain increased Enghsh expenditure. "Was there 
ever anything which required greater vigUance than the pecu- 
niary management of the country? I have given you the 
most galhng instances of the abuse of the power of misman- 
agement. I have given those instances from what, if they 



SPEECH IN HIS OWN DEFENCE. 237 

were not parliamentary documents, you would hesitate to 
credit tlie amount of robbery so open, plunder so obvious and 
so extensive, tlie accumulation of debt so entirely inconsistent 
with the supposed details of the Union — so inconsistent with 
all that could occur under anything like proper manage- 
ment. 

You, gentlemen, are familiar in private life, with the evU 
effects resulting from giving to others, even the most disinter- 
ested persons, the management of your concorns ; and it is 
with nations as with individuals. But then, you may be told 
that when the peace came, there was a relaxation and a dimin- 
ution hi the taxation. I wUl tell you what there has been — 
there has been a diminution of taxation in England of ,£41,085,- 
202, but in Ireland, the diminution has been only £1,584,211 ; 
that is in the proportion of IJ to 40. That is the way the 
Enghsh strike off taxes for themselves ; that is the way they 
diminished oiu' taxation. There is another bitter ingredient 
in our cup, that the taxation which, up to 1836, was in Irish 
currency, was then converted at once into British currency, 
and by that operation one-thniieth was added to our taxation. 
As mercantile men, interested in the prosperity of our country, 
I ask you, is it possible that there can be prosperity while the 
management of your concerns are in their power ? Your re- 
laxation from taxation depends on thek will and mercy. Had 
you an Irish parliament, they would insist on the accounts be- 
ing fauly taken. They would pay every penny that Ireland 
owes, but no more. Can you then, by any verdict, stand be- 
tween your countrymen and the obtaining of this justice from 
England? I have shown you what have been the financial 
effects of this miscalled Union. 

I shall now read a document of great importance, as to the 
means by which the Union was carried. It is the protest of 
nineteen Irish peers against the Union. 

[Here the honorable and learned gentleman read a protest, 
which was signed Leinster, Meath, and several others of the peers 
of Ireland.] 

This, gentlemen, is the authentic declaration of the Irish 
peerage, in reference to the atrocity committed against this 



238 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

country, by the carrying of the act of Union. I am sure there 
is not one of their descendants who does not glory that his an- 
cestor signed that protest, and I trust we will soon have an 
opportunity of seeing those descendants carrying the inten- 
tions of their ancestors into effect, and taking their seats in a 
parliament in College Green. Among other evils resulting 
from the Union, is the inadequacy of the representation of Ire- 
land, as contrasted with that of England, and in particular the 
infinitely less voice of the people of Ireland, by reason of the 
inadequacy of the register. Gentlemen, the following extract, 
which is of some length, but great importance, will tend to 
show the injustice done to Ireland in the nominal Union, by 
gi^ang something like an adequate proportion of representa- 
tives to England, but denying to Ireland a similar advantage. 
I am anxious to read this now, and cast it before the public, 
because there appears to be something like a disposition to 
concede something on this point. Last year we were told 
there was a termination to concession. This year we are told 
that something will be done in the extension of the parhament- 
ary franchise. You wiU see how necessary this is : 

"The result of tlie injustice done to the people of Ireland by the re- 
striction of the elective franchise is made manifest by a contrast between 
the population of the several counties of England, and the number of 
registered voters therein, with the population and number of regis- 
tered voters of the different Irish counties. We take our statement 
of numbers from the parliamentry papers, and by comparing the least 
populous counties in England with the most populous in Ireland — West- 
moreland and Cork, for instance — we find the following result : The ru- 
ral population of Westmoreland is 43,464, and its number of registered 
voters after the Reform Act, amotinted to 4,392. Nearly one out of every 
ten inhabitants. Whereas, in the county of Cork the population is 
703,716, and the number of electors registered after the Irish Reform Act, 
was only 3,835, being scarcely one out of every two hundred of the in- 
habitants. 

" We ask, therefore, is this to be endured ? 

" I may now mention the effect in particular localities. In Wales the 
population is 800,000 — in Cork the rui-al population is 713,716. How are 
they respectively represented in parhameat ? Wales, with 800,000 in- 
habitants, has 28 members of parhament; the county Cork, with nearly the 
same population, has but two members of parhament ; the county Mayo, 
with 400,000 inhabitants, has but two members of parhament ; Wales, 
with 800,000 inhabitants — only double the number — has 28 members of 



SPEECH IN HIS OWN DEFENCE. 239 

parliament. The people of Ireland don't know these things, but I -will 
take care they shall know it ; and I anticipate easily the result. I will 
just give another specimen — ^I will take five counties in each country to 
show you how the representation stands. Cumberland, with a popula- 
tion of 126,681, has four members ; the county of Cork, with a popula- 
tion of 713,716, has but two members. Leicestershire, with a population 
of 197,276, has four members. Tipperary, with a population of 390,598 
has but two members. Northampton, with a population of 179,276, has 
four members. The county of Down, with population of 338,571, has 
but two members. Worcestershire, with a population of 211,356, has 
four members. The county of Galway, with a population of 381,407, has 
but two members. Wiltshire, with a population of 239,181, has four 
members. Tyrone, with a population of 302,945, has but two members. 
That is to say — five EngHsh counties, with a population of less than a 
mUUon — that is, with a population amounting to 953,770 — have twenty 
members ; and five Irish counties, with a population of 2,116,167 persons, 
have only ten representatives. Now let me show you the number of 
electors in six counties, Westmoreland, with a rural population of 43,- 
464, has 4,392 registered electors. Cork, with a rural population of 713,- 
716, has 3, 835 registered electors. Bedford, with a rural population of 88, - 
524, has 3,966 registered electors. Antrim, with a rural population of 
316,909, has 3,487 registered electors. Hertford, with a rural population 
of 95,977, has 5,031 registered electors. Galway, with a rural popula- 
lation of 381,564, has 3,061 registered electors. 

" Here is Westmoreland, with less than one fourteenth of the popu- 
lation of Cork, and yet it has an absolute majority of 557 registered 
voters. Is this to be called reform ? 

"Again, take the county of Bedford, with a rural population of 88,- 
424 inhabitants ; its registered voters under the Eeform Act were 3,966, 
while Antrim, with a population of 316,909, had only 3,487 registered 
voters — that is, Bedford had an absolute majority of near 500 voters 
over Antrim, notwithstanding the enormous disproportion in the number 
of its inhabitants. 

"Hertford, with a population of 95,977 inhabitants, had 5,013 regis- 
tered voters, while Galway, with 381,564 inhabitants, had only 3,061 
voters." 

" Eutlandshire, the smallest county in England, with only 19,385 in- 
habitants, had 1,296 votes, while Longford, with 112,558 inhabitants, had 
only 1,294, absolutely two less than Eutlandshire. 

"Again, Huntingdon, with a population of 47,799 inhabitants, had 
2,647 voters, while Donegal, with a population of 289,149, had only 
1,448 voters ; and Limerick, one of the wealthiest counties in Ireland, 
with an opulent agricultural population 248,801 inhabitants, had only 
2,565 electors. 

"Nay, even the Isle of Wight, with only 28,731 inhabitants, had 1,167 
voters, while Mayo, with 366,328 inhabitants, had only 1,350 voters, and 



240 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL o'CONNELL. 

Protestant Tyrone, with a population of 310,000 inhabitants, had only 
1,151 electors, absolutely IG voters less than the Isle of Wight. 

" The Island of Anglesea also, -with a population of only 33,508 inhab- 
itants, had 1,187 voters ; while Kildare, with 108,424 inhabitants, had 
only 1,112 voters ; and Kerry, with 265,126 inhabitants, had only 1,161 
voters, just 26 voters less than Anglesea, and 6 less than the Isle of 
Wight. 

" Even if we compare the largest counties in both countries. York- 
shire, with an agricultural population of 913,738 inhabitants, and Cork, 
with a i3opulation of 703,716, we find that the EngUsh county had 33,- 
154 electors, while the Msh one had only 3,385. 

"We find, therefore, that England, in her rural population of 8,336,- 
000 inhabitants, had 344,564 county voters, while Ireland, in a similar 
proj)ortion of 7,027,509 inhabitants, had only 60,607 registered electors. 

" The consequence of all these defects in the Ii'ish Eeform Act is, that 
the disproportion between the number of electors in EngUsh and Irish 
cities and buroughs, when compared to the relative population, is as 
gi-eat as in the counties. For we find from the same returns that, after 
the Eeform Act, Exeter, with a population of 27,932 inhabitants, had 
3,426 voters— Hull, with 46,746 inhabitants, had 4,275 electors— while 
Waterford, with a population of 28,821 inhabitants, had only 1,278 elec- 
tors, being in the ratio of 3 to 1. 

"Again, comparing the largest cities and boroughs in Ireland, with 
the smaller ones in England, we find the following results : 

" Worcester, with a population of 27,313 inhabitants, has 2, 608 voters, 
while Limerick, with a j)opulation of 66,554 inhabitants, has only 2,850 
electors. 

" Chester, with only 21,363 inhabitants, has no less than 2,231 voters, 
while Belfast, the wealthiest and most commercial city in Ireland, with 
53,000 inhabitants, had only 1,926 electors. 

" The city of Cork, with 110,000 inhabitants, had only 3,650 electors, 
including the non-resident freemen, while Newcastle-upon-Tyne, with a 
population of 42,260 inhabitants, had 4,952 voters, Preston, with a 
population of 33,112 inhabitants, had 4,204 electors— both of them more 
, than Cork, which last city has more than treble the number of inhabit- 
ants, of either of the other two ; and Bristol, with 104,338 inhabitants, not 
equal to the population of Cork, has 10,347 voters, being three times the 
constituency of the Irish city. 

"If, too, we compare the smaller boroughs in both countries together, 
we find that those which barely escaped schedule A, with populations 
varying from 2 to 3,000 inhabitants, have more electors than the bo- 
roughs in Ireland, retained by the act of Union, with from 10 to 12,000 
inhabitants. 

"For example, Wallinford, Launcestown, Wareham, Arundel, have aU 
under 3,000 inhabitants, while the electoral constituencies in all exceed 
300 voters. However, in Athlone and Bandon, with over ten thousand 



SPEECH IN HIS OWN DEFENCE. 241 

inhabitants in each, the votes do not exceed 250, and in many others, 
such as Kinsale, Coleraine, and New Eoss, the available constituency falls 
short of 200 voters. 

"If, also, we compare the metropohtan constituencies of both coun- 
tries, where an equahty in household value may be expected, we find 
that Dublin, with a population of 210,000 inhabitants, had only 9,081 
voters, including aU the bad freemen lately manufactured by the corpor- 
ation, while the city of London, with a population of only 122,000 inhab- 
itants, had 18,584 electors, and only 17,315 houses above £10 value. 

"Nothing can more clearly illustrate the disadvantages under which 
the Irish cities labor, with respect to the £10 household franchise, than the 
comparison of the number of houses of £10 a year clear value in London, 
and the number of electors upon that quahfication, with the number of 
similar houses in Dubhn, and of similar electors. These facts appear 
from the parHamentary returns. The number of £10 houses in the city 
of London is 17,315, and the number of electors appears to be 18,584 ; 
while in DubHn, the number of houses of £10 value, according to Sher- 
rard's valuation, amounted to 14,105, whUe the number of electors only 
amount to 9,081. Thus, in the city of London, there are more electors 
than £10 householders, whereas, in the city of Dublin the aggregate of 
electors does not amount to within one third of the number of £10 
householders. 

" Wales compm-ed with Ireland. — ^Wales has a population of 800,000. 
In Cork the rural population is 713,716. How are they respectively 
presented ? Wales has twenty-eight members; Cork, with nearly the same 
population, has but two." 

Here is a parliamentary paper ; it was published in 1832, 
and the sessional number is 206. It states the relative 
amounts of the Enghsh, Scotch, "Welsh, and Irish revenue in 
that year, and there is no similar paper of a later date that I 
am aware of. The Irish revenue was X4:,392,000. The Welsh 
revenue was X348,000. 

This is the exhibition which there turn makes of what the 
honorable member considers the superior wealth of the princi- 
pality of Wales. That principahty, in point of fact, falls be- 
low Ireland in any of those pretensions to representation 
founded upon wealth. I have looked into the amounts of the 
revenue collected in the single port of Cork, and they exceed 
that of the principahty of Wales. There are no annual 
records to be referred to in such a case, but I find that in one 
year the customs of Cork amounted to £263,000, and that in 
another year the excise amounted to X272,000. These amounts 



242 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

give, I believe, a fair average view of the revenues collected in 
the port of Cork, and theii- total is X535,000, The receipts of 
Wales are only X548,000. Cork, then, is entitled to more 
members than the entire principality of Wales, on these very 
grounds on which Great Britain justifies her overwhelming 
numerical superiority in the House of Commons. If Wales 
have not a representation disproportioned to her wealth, Cork 
ought to return 43 members to parhament. 

This is the way Ireland has been defrauded in her fran- 
chise, her representation, and in every one of the details of 
the Union measure. But are there no other evil results from 
the Union? Is it not injurious in its consequences to your 
commerce, your agriculture, and your manufactures, to have a 
distant legislature? I had many particulars to lay before you, 
showing the state of different trades in Dublin, and how they 
had been injmiously affected by the total neglect of an Eng- 
hsh parhament ; but I shall for the present take for example 
the coal trade. I have extracts from seven or eight volumes 
of the Eeports of the Chamber of Commerce upon that trade, 
which I shall read to you. [The honorable and learned gen- 
tleman then read the passages and proceeded.] Why have I 
read these to you ? I will tell you. For eight years the mer- 
chants of Dubhn, the merchants of Ireland, complained of the 
hardship to their trade. The Tories were in oi3&ce, and they 
were succeeded by the Whigs. This plain and palpable vio- 
lation of the act of Union was estabhshed, clearly proved, and 
yet there was no redress from Whig or Tory. At length the 
agitation for Repeal commenced, the discussion of the ques- 
tion was coming on, and the Whigs put an end to the 
grievance ; and what they would not do in justice to the mer- 
cantile interests they did at length from a prudent and proper 
motive, and the articles of the Union were, in that respect, 
carried into effect, and the duties taken off coal. Gentlemen, 
I ask you, is it not a sad consequence of the Union, the enor- 
mous expense incurred in obtaining any private biU in London 
respecting property, railroads, or any other matter it may be 
necessary to obtain it for. There is the expense of going to 
London, the loss of time there, and the heavy cost of passing 
any such bill through a committee. What has lately hap- 



SPEECH IN HIS OWN DEFENCE. 243 

pened in your own neighborliood ? The Dublin and Droglie- 
da railway biU cost X28,000 before it was passed. If the par- 
liament was in Dublin, X1,000 would be more than it would 
be necessary to expend upon it, and I defy any man to carry 
a private bill there, particularly if there should be any opposi- 
tion to it, without a proportionate expense. Can anything be 
more frightful than the expense of election committees? 
Every witness must be taken to England, and must be kept 
there, and if he should be sent back after his examination, or 
otherwise out of the way, you have a chance of losing your 
seat as well as all your expenses. Is it worthy that the entire 
of the expense should be circulated in London and not one 
farthing of it in Dubhn, and not a single Irish lawyer 
receives even a sohtary fee out of it, while such vast sums 
are expended in the complicated machinery of bringing a pe- 
tition before a committee of the House of Commons in Lon- 
don ? Every shilling goes into the pockets of the English 
barristers practising there. Gentlemen, the expenditure of 
pubUc establishments in this country before the Union pro- 
duced a considerable mitigation of the taxation. What is now 
become of all those boards? Where is the treasury board? 
Transplanted to England. Where is the excise board ? Trans- 
ferred to England. The customs board ? Transferred to Eng- 
land. The stamp-office and others are greatly diminished, 
and progressing to extinction — even the Old Man's Hospital 
is extinct. Is this principle of centralization fair which pro- 
duces all those advantages to England, and all this misery to 
Ireland ? I shall now ask your attention to a statement of 
the number of English and Scotchmen appointed to offices of 
the state in Ireland. I take it from the Mail. Let me first 
observe that the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland is an English- 
man ; the Chief Secretary is an Englishman ; the Lord Chan- 
cellor is an Enghshman. The writer in the Mail proceeds, in 
answer to an article in the London Times relative to this 
topic of complaint : 

" The Ardibislaop of Dublin is an Englishman ; the chief administra- 
tor of the Irish Poor Law is an Enghshman ; the paymaster of Irish civil 
services is a Scotchman ; the chief commissioner of Irish public works 
is an Englishman ; the Teller of the Irish Exchequer is an English- 



244 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

man ; the chief officer of the Irish constabulary is a Scotchman ; the 
chief officer of the Irish post-office is an Enghshman ; the Collector of 
Excise is a Scotchman ; the head of the revenue police is an Enghsh- 
man ; the second in command is a Scotchman ; the persons employed in 
the collection of the customs are Enghsh and Scotch — in the proj)ortion 
of thirty- jfive to one. " 

" But the Times may perhaps observe — ' True ; but all this is only the 
elucidation of unbarring the gates of preferment, unsparingly and hon- 
estly.' Scotchmen and Englishmen are placed in office in Ireland, and 
Irishmen, in retui-n, in Scotland and England, in order to draw closer 
the bonds of union between the three united nations. 

"Again — let us see how facts actually stand. There are cabinet minis- 
ters — Englishmen, 10; Scotchmen, 3; Irishmen, 0. 

"The Duke of WeUington scarcely considers himself an Irishman, and 
certainly cannot be called a representative of Irish interests in the cabi- 
net. 

"Lord* of the Treasury — Englishmen 4, Scotchmen 1, Irishmen 1. 
Clerks of the Treasury — ^EngUshmen and Scotchmen 112, Mr. Fitzgerald 
(query an Irishman ?) 1. Members of the Lord Steward's and Lord 
Chamberlain's Household — Englishmen and Scotchmen 225, Irishmen 4. 
British Ministers to Foreign Courts— Englishmen and Scotchmen 131, 
Irishmen 4, Poor Law Commissioners — Englishmen 3, Irishmen 0." 
" We presume," adds the editor, "that these facts show that the natives 
of the three kingdoms are aU placed uj)on an equal footing ! the chances 
of access to preferment to an Enghshman or Scotchman in Ireland, being 
in the few instances that have occurred to us while writing, as 6 to ; 
while the probabihty of an Irishmen obtaining place in England, appears, 
from an analogous calculation, to be in proportion of 491 to 10, or 
as 1 to 50. He could easily swell, he adds, this Hst, were it neces- 
sary." 

I liave read that to you to sliow the meaning of the phrase 
" Ireland for the Irish, and the Irish for Ireland." It is a per- 
fect fallacy, a delusion to assert that the Irish are indemnified 
by promotions or appointments in England for the loss of the 
appointments at home. The places in England and Scotland 
are few enough for Enghshmen and Scotchmen, and they give 
them the places in Ireland in addition. I proceed, gentlemen, 
to show you other evil results from the Union. I quote from 
Fox's remarks upon the state of the nation in 1807. The 
Union was atrocious in its principle and abominable in its 
means. It was a measure the most disgraceful to the govern- 
ment of the country that was ever carried or proposed. So 
far was he from thinking that Great Britain had a right to 



SPEECH IN HIS OWN DEFENCE. 245 

govern Ireland if she did not clioose to be governed by ns, that 
he maintained that no country that ever had existed or did 
exist, had a right to hold the sovereignaty of another against 
the will and consent of that other. I have given abundance of 
proof fi'om extracts I have read of the prosperity of Ireland 
under the fostering care of her own parliament; but I will 
quote a little further. I will show by reference to parlia- 
mentary papers the decrease from 1800 to 1827, of consump- 
tion in Ireland, compared with the increase in England. I 
find the respective consumption of tea, coffee, sugar, tobacco . 
and wine, from the time of the Union to the year 1827, to be 
stated in the following manner ; 

Tea, Increase in England 25 per cent. 

Increase in Ireland 24 " 

Coffee, Increase in England 1800 " 

Increase in Ireland 400 " 

Sugar, Increase in England 26 " 

Increase in Ireland 16 " 

Tobacco, Increase in England .27 " 

Decrease in Ireland 37 " 

"Wine, Increase in England 24 " 

Decrease in Ireland 45 " 

DECEEASE OP CONSUMPTION IN IKELAND EEOM 1802 TO 1823, 
EEOM TABLES PUBLISHED BY MR. HALLIDAY. 



Green Tea, . . . 
Decrease 


IMPOKTED INTO ZEEIiAKD. 

lbs. 

. 1802 152,674 

1823 28,168 

114.506 lbs.. 


Port Wine, . . . . 
Decrease, . 


. 1802.., 

1823 


4,487 

1,014 

3.473 tuns, 




. 1802 

1823 




French Wines, . 


454 tuns. 

121 


Decrease, . 


333 tuns, 



Those who defend the Union and advocate its continuance 
are in the habit of averring that our trade in the exportation 



246 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

of cattle has greatly increased since the passage of that mea- 
sure, which in my mind has operated with a most disastrous 
influence on the fortunes of my country. But gentlemen, 
I hold in my hand a document which demonstrate to you that 
this is a delusion, and will make you clearly understand how 
the real facts of the case are. Our cattle export has dimin- 
ished by the Union. Hear how the facts really are. 

" The defenders of the Union ordinarily lay much stress on the in- 
creased export of cattle, sheep, and pro\dsions, since that measure. 
This export, however, is from a starving peoj)le ; and being so, the argu- 
ment as to its gi-eat value to Ireland is not one to waste much time in 
considering. A curious fact has come out with reference to this subject. 
A return appeared in all the DubHn papers, last November, of the num- 
ber of sheep and horned cattle at the great fair at Ballinasloe, every 
year from 1790 to 1842. The following extracts from it, we put in the 
same table, with figures, from a parhamentary return of 1843, and the 
Irish Railway Report, showing the export of the articles mentioned in 
two of the years included. We have no return of the export last year. 

1799.— Sheep, 77,900 ; exported, 800. Horned cattle, 9,900 ; exported 
14,000. 

1835.— Sheep, 62,400 ; exported, 125,000. Horned cattle, 8,500 ; ex- 
ported, 98,000. 

1842.— Sheep, 76,800; horned cattle, 14,300." 

The question naturally arises — what became of the 77,000 
surplus sheep in the first year as well as the sheep at other 
fairs ? They were eaten at home. 

" As to oxen, 14,000 went away in 1799, and 98,000 in 1835 ; yet if 
we test the product of all Ireland in the former year, by the most suffi- 
cient criterion of the amount at Ballinasloe fair, we shall find that Ire- 
laud had then more for sale thaji in 1835, and consumed the greater part 
of her surplus over her export — exporting the remainder in the more 
valuable form of provisions. 

•' The parhamentary documents quoted before enable us to show what 
the export of provisions was in the years 1799 and 1835 :— in the year 
1799 there were exported 14,000 cattle, 4,000 swine, and 278,000 barrels of 
beef and pork ; in 1835, 98,000 cattle, 76,000 swine, and 140,000 barrels of 
beef and pork. There has then been since the Union a decrease of 
the more valuable export, viz. , provisions — valuable because of the la- 
bor employed at home in their manufacture, and an increase of the less 
valuable, viz., the hve animals — ^less valuable to a country as an article of 
export, by reason of the small quantity of employment which is given in 
the preparing of it. 



SPEECH m HIS OWN DEFENCE. 247 

" As tlie dimintition of the number of barrels of beef and pork will not 
by any means account for the great increase of the live export — while the 
whole number of cattle produced in Ireland in 1835 was, at any rate, not 
greater than in 1799 — it follows that much of the excess of Uve export in 
1835 must have been by deduction from the number previously con- 
sumed at home, and therefore that the home consumption in the latter 
year was considerably less than the year before the Union, notwithstand- 
ing the cent, per cent, increase of population." 

Gentlemen, you must bear in mind tliat tlie trade of cattle 
exportation is much more beneficial to tlie population of a 
country tlian made-up provisions. The increase in cattle ex- 
portation trade is indicative of a country's prosperity in a de- 
gree much more eminent than the increase in the provision 
trade. In fact, an increase in the latter branch of commerce 
is rather indicative of distress among the people. In the one 
case we have an evidence of prosperity, and in the other a 
clear proof of poverty and destitution. In 1833 Mr. Boyton 
gave us the advantage of a clear research upon this subject. 
Permit me to read it for you : 

" The exports and imports, as far as they are a test of a decay of pro- 
fitable occupation — so far as the exports and imports are supplied from 
the parliamentary returns — exhibit extraordinary evidences of the con- 
dition of the laboring classes. The importation of flaxseed, an evidence 
of the extent of the most important source of employment, was, in 1790, 
339,745 barrels ; 1800, 327,621 barrels ; 1830, 460,458 barrels. The im- 
portation of silk, raw and thrown, was,in 1790, 92,091 lbs.; 1800, 79,860 
lbs., 1830, 3,190 lbs. Of unwrought kon, in 1790, 2,271 tons; in 1800, 10,- 
241 tons ; in 1830, 871 tons. Formerly we spun all our own woolen and 
worsted yarn. We imported in 1790 only 2,294 lbs. ; in 1,800, 1860 lbs. ; in 
1826, 662,750 lbs. — an enormous increase. There were, I understand, up- 
ward of thirty persons engaged in the woolen trade in DubHn, who have be- 
come bankrupts since 1821. There has been, doubtless, an increase in ex- 
ports of cottons. The exports were— in 1800, 9,147 yards; 1826, 7, 793,873. 
The exports of cotton from Great Britain were— in 1829, 402,517,196 
yards, value £12,516,247, which wiU give the value of our cotton exports 
at something less than a quarter of a million — poor substitute for our 
Unens, which in the province of Ulster alone exceed in value two mil- 
lions two hundred thousand pounds. In fact, every other return affords 
unequivocal proof that the main sources of occupation are decisively cut 
off from the main body of the population of this country. The export 
of Uve cattle and of corn has very greatly increased ; but these are raw 
materials ; there is little more labor in the production of an ox than the 



248 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL o'CONNELL. 

occupation of him ■who herds and houses him ; his value is the rent of 
the land, the price of the grass that feeds him, while an equal value of 
cotton, or linen, or pottery, will requii-e for its production the labor of 
many j)eople for money. Thus the exports of the country now are some- 
what under the value of the exports thirty years since, but they employ 
nothing like the number of people for their production ; employment 
is immensely reduced : population increased three eighths. Thus, in this 
transition from the state of a manufacturing population to an agricultu- 
ral, a mass of misery, poverty, and discontent is created." 

By this statement you will see that the importation of yam 
increased, but that is no subject for fehcitation, inasmuch as 
that increase was obtained at the expense of a diminution in 
the home manufacture of the article. The next document to 
which I wiU take the liberty of dkecting your attention, is a 
report by Dr. Stack, in reference to the state of a valuable 
charitable institution in this city. It is an important docu- 
ment, as clearly evidencing the effects of the Union upon 
institutions of this kind : * 

" The Sick Poor Institution, since its estabHshment in 1794, has shared 
in the sad reverses which the locality has undergone over which its op- 
erations extended. The Hberties of Dublin, once the seat of manufac- 
tures and of wealth, have degenerated into the habitation of the decayed or 
unemployed artisan ; the abode of fashion has now become proverbially 
the haunt of vice, and poverty, and of disease ; hence while the necessi- 
ty for such an institution as this has become every day more urgent, the 
supporters of it have proportionally diminished — as the objects of re- 
lief have increased its friends have decreased. In order at once to per- 
ceive this altered state of things, a mere inspection of the returns made 
at different periods is all that is necessary. In 1798, patients, 3,640 — 
ncome, £1,035 17s. Id. ; 1841, patients, 6,159— income, £927 4s. lOd." 

Thus you will perceive that while the patients increased four 
fifths, the income of the institution has decreased in the pro- 
portion of three fourths. I have now to submit to your con- 
sideration some melancholy details illustrating the disastrous 
effects of the Union upon our national industry. The state- 
ment may be rehed on as strictly authentic. [Here the 
learned gentlemen read the extract alluded to.] There is 
scarcely a trade in Dublin concerning which I could not, did 
I not fear to trespass at too great length upon your attention, 
give you details equally distressing ; for, alas, equally authentic 



SPEECH IN HIS OWN DEFENCE. 249 

details showing a daily decrease of employment, and a 
daily increase of misery and distress — showing how men 
who were once opulent manufacturers are now reduced 
to absolute beggary — showing this fact, which is more elo- 
quent than a thousand arguments, that whereas before the 
Union, there were 68,000 operatives in Dublin, there are at 
present only 4,000. About a year since I made inquiries into 
the state of the Liberty, which has been well described to con- 
sist of one mass of ruins : and the following description was 
handed to me. [Here the learned gentlemen read the extract 
alluded to.] Need I dwell upon the evidences of ruined great- 
ness and fading prosperity which every moment meet your 
eye, as you walk through the streets of DubUn ? Need I tell 
you how prosperity, happiness, and affluence, were once found 
to reside, where. nothing now can be found but misery, distress, 
and desolation-? I have a statistical statement of the decay of 
house property at hand, but I will not trouble you with a 
lengthened detail of it at this hour of the day. Take two or 
three of the leading mansions of the city, and mark to what 
they have been reduced. What has become of the house that 
was once the noble mansion of Lord Powerscourt's iamily ? 
It had been a stamp office ; it is now the counting-house of a 
respectable firm in the cotton, silk, and woolen trade. What 
has become of Lord Moira's house — that house which had 
once been the residence of the Plantagenets in this country ? 
Alas ! are you not well aware that it is now the Mendicity ? 
And that magnificent edifice the Belvedere house, what sad 
reverses has it experienced ! It cost £28,000 in the building 
— the stairs alone cost <£3,000, but the whole premises were the 
other day sold for a school to the Jesuits for eleven hundred 
pounds ; and are these melancholy spectacles day by day, and 
hour by hour, to be displayed before our eyes, and are we to 
make no effort to retrieve the fallen fortunes of our country ? 
Are the men who would restore her to her pristine prosperity 
to be menaced with a dungeon ? Are the men who endeavor 
to succor and defend her to be branded as malefactors and 
conspirators? It is to you, gentlemen, that I appeal for a 
solution of this proposition. I have estabhshed my position ; 
I have shown the prosperity of Ireland before the Union ; I 
have shown the advantages to be secured to Ireland by a res- 



250 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL o'COKNELL. 

toration of her domestic parliament ; I have shown how man- 
ufacturers have been reduced to the condition of operatives, 
and operatives to the condition of mendicants, by the ruinous 
effects of that disastrous measure — all that have I shown and 
nothing more — and for that I am to be persecuted and for 
that I am to be prosecuted as a conspirator ! I have shown 
you the results of the Union, and have I not displayed to your 
eyes a picture the contemplation of which renders it the duty 
of all honest and true hearted men to endeavor to remedy this 
state of things? That we are combined for Kepeal is our 
pride and boast ; but that we are combined together for any 
illegal or criminal purpose is an idea which, with scorn and 
indignation, we repudiate. Even before the Union was intro- 
duced, the moment there was an apprehension of its being 
introduced, coupled, as it was then said to be, with Cathohc 
emancipation, the Catholics of Dubhn held a meeting in Fran- 
cis-street, on the 9th of April, 1795, John Sweetman in the 
chair, at which they expressed their indignant refusal to ac- 
cept emanciiDation coupled with any Union measure. The 
first time I addressed a pubhc assembly was on the 13th of 
January, 1800. It was my maiden speech. Pray hsten to the 
last passage in the speech, and you will find that the ruling 
principles of my enthe pohtical life are all embodied in it, and 
that my views were anything, and are anything, but sectarian. 

[Mr. O'Connell then read the passage fi-om his siDeech.] 

That was my first pubhc declaration. In the sincerity of 
my soul I made that declaration — in the sincerity of my soul 
I made that offer. It might have been taken up ; there was a 
strong party in the country at that time highly unfavorable to 
the Koman Cathohc claims. But I risked it, and I repeat, 
in the sincerity of my soul, I made the declaration that 1 
would prefer the re-enactment of the penal code, in all its hor- 
rors, rather than consent to the Union ; and I threw myself on 
the generosity of my fellow-countrymen, the Protestants of 
Ireland. Gentlemen, in 1810, you have aheady heard, the 
Kepeal was brought forward, and pubhc meetings were held 
in the city of Dublin. My speech upon one of these occasions 
has been read for you. I won't distress you by reading- any- 



SPEECH IN HIS OWN DEFENCE. 251 

tMng like the entire of it ; but allow me to read for you tlie 
concluding passage, because it turns on a topic I am now 
discussing. 

[The honorable and learned gentleman read the passage alluded 

to.] 

Is that sectarianism ? Is that preferring the interests of a 
party or portion of the people to the nation at large ? Secta- 
rianism ! Why, gentlemen, you cannot but be aware that the 
cause of the Protestant dissenters of England was warmly 
advocated by me — ^that it was I drew up the petition in favor 
of the English Protestant Dissenters — that that petition was 
signed by twenty-eight thousand Catholics, passed at meetings 
of the association, and afterwards at the great aggregate 
meeting of Cathohcs, and that petition which I drew up was 
not upon the table of the House of Commons six weeks when 
the Protestant Dissenters of England were emancipated. I 
therefore treat with contempt and indignation the idea of 
sectarian difference ; and again, throughout the entire volumes 
that have been presented to you, has there been one word of 
a bigoted description found among them? 

I have made more speeches than any other pubhc man that 
ever existed — I have been more abused than any other man, 
but amidst all their calumnies they never flung upon me an 
accusation of bigotry against my fellow beings of any other 
persuasion. I have been calumniated in everything else — in 
that I have been spared, and why ? because the folly and 
futihty of the calumny was so excessive that even my calum- 
niators spared me on that point. Sectarianism, therefore, is 
out of the question ; but what was our mode ? Legal and 
peaceable, and constitutional proceedings. I need not remind 
you again that I possess the confidence of the Irish people. 
I possessed it with a full repetition of my determination that 
all should be peaceable, with my full declaration that one sin- 
gle act of violence would detach me from the Eepeal agitation. 
But it has been said I made violent speeches. Has any vio- 
lence proceeded from me ? If I have made violent speeches 
would it not be fair to give me a recent and speedy opportu- 
nity of seeing how far the reports of those speeches were 



252 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL o'CONNELL. 

accurate, and what explanatory portions were applicable, and 
not reserve them for so remote a period. If violence is to be 
talked of, let us see this violence — it is an article from the 
Cheltenham Journal and Stroud Herald, August 2, 1841. 

"What would, in reality, be justice to Ireland ? — Wliat would be the 
greatest blessing that could be conferi'ed on Ireland ? The answer to 
these questions is promi)t, and comprised in a single word — conquest. 
Few are the nations, if any, that are the worse for having been conquered 
— and in the gi-eat majority of instances, as conquest implies superiority, 
the conquered have been gainers. The Eomans conquered, and where 
they conquered they also civihzed. 

"Now, Ii-eland, though under the dominion of England, has never 
been conquered by her. She may take this in the light of a compli- 
ment, or the reverse. To this day she is wild, savage, uncivilized, 
scarcely human. We speak of the mass of the people — of the aborigines 
of the island, of the Popish part of the population — of the wretched and 
ferocious slaves of O'Connell — of those who have never been brought 
under the gentle sway of the Protestant faith. 

" Had Ireland been actually conquered by England it would not have 
been thus. 

"The first step toward the conquest of Ireland would be to send over 
a commanding mihtary force, not to shed blood, but to prevent the shed- 
ding of blood. 

" Every individual Poj)ish priest should then be secured, and exiled 
for life, nor be permitted to return under the penalty of death ; and aU 
jDersons found aiding and abetting a Popish priest in secreting himself, 
should also be condemned to exile for life. 

" These men, the priests, &c., might be shipped for some of the colo- 
nies, and there receive allotments of land, and there be kept under strict 
surveillance. 

" Such is a simple outline of the measures for the bloodless conquest 
of Ireland. 

"It is for a Conservative government alone to achieve this glc|p^. Let 
Sir Eobert Peel and his colleagues look to it." 

It appears by thos'e papers that we did not tlireaten any- 
thing, and it appears distinctly that every disclaimer, and repe- 
tition of disclaimer, to use anything but peaceable and legal 
means, was given over and over again. There was no violence 
of an}^ kind ; none whatever had taken place. We are now 
charged with a newspaper conspiracy, because it is alleged 
that certain newspapers contained libels. Why, if they did, 
there is no person in the world more open to or capable of 



SPEECH IN HIS OWN DEFENCE. 253 

pumshment for an offence than a newspaper proprietor. He 
is perliaps more in the hands of the law than any other man 
in existence. There is the stamp office, which must know all 
about him, and the moment he offends they have nothing to do 
but caU on him to account for his actions. The Attorney- 
General had this facihty if he wished, or if the libel law had 
been infringed. But there is one thing in the so-called news- 
paper conspiracy that cannot be got over. Take up the Na- 
tion, which was read for you — a great deal of prose, and a 
considerable quantity of poetry— love songs and all, and then 
take up the Pilot, which was also read for you — all prose and 
no poetry — ^take up any of these articles, and can you say that 
one of the Journals co^Died the other ? Can they produce any 
one of these papers where the other copied an article from it ? 
No, they cannot ; and they could not charge them with con- 
spkacy unless they joined for that purpose. In place of con- 
spu-acy they would find discord, not concord, between them. 
There was not a particle of combiaation among them. In 
fact, there was not only no combination among them, but a 
kind of rivalship and Jealousy relative to these articles. Was 
that like combination or crime ? I will not go into that ques- 
tion at present, as it is so well ascertained. Well, gentlemen, 
one word about arbitration courts. I shall not trouble you 
with many observations on that head. One of the gTeat ad- 
vantages of these courts, however, was the abohtion of un- 
necessary and superfluous oaths. There was no oath taken in 
these courts at aU. Gentlemen, I do not know if it strikes you 
in the same hght as it strikes me, on the subject of oaths ; but 
I think the estabhshing of such courts a great advantage in 
that respect. In the superior courts the oath was a different 
thing ; but I ask any Christian man if he would not wish to 
see unnecessary swearing abolished. 

I find by a parliamentary return in 1832 that there were one 
hundred and seventy-two thousand oaths taken in the excise 
department, and in another year one hundred and fifty-eight 
thousand in the excise also. This was an unnecessary profana- 
tion of the name of the Deity — one hundred and fifty-eight thou- 
sand oaths in one year, and one hundred and seventy-two thou- 
sand in another ! What an enormous quantity of unnecessary 



254 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL o'CONNELL. 

oaths ! In the arbitration courts there was no oath whatever 
necessary. I shudder at the idea of so many oaths being taken 
in one year, and I had several conversations on the subject, 
and Lord Nugent did me the high honor to ask my assistance in 
bringing in a bill to abolish unnecessary oaths, and substitute 
a declaration in the stead. I consented, and we succeeded in 
passing a bill substituting declarations instead of oaths, and 
I hope I shall see the day when such wiU be extended even 
farther, for I abhor the taking of the sacred name of God in 
vain, and the man who would tell an untruth in a matter of 
property, would not set the least value on his oath, nor would 
he at all scruple swearing to what he knew to be false if he 
thought it ripe for his purpose. I hope, gentlemen, we wiU 
see the day when declarations like the Quakers, which are as 
binding on the conscience as the oath, will be substituted and 
used as an oath by all Christian men and in aU Christian coun- 
tries. I am sure you wiU not ascribe conspiracy to that. 

Well, gentlemen, I now come to the means by which we were 
to achieve the Repeal of the Legislative Union. The means 
are pacific, and I would not adopt any other means for the ac- 
comphshment of that sacred object. It was said that the 
meetings were not commensurate with the objects in view, but 
the object was one that could not be ascertained if the entire 
Irish people had not called for the Eepeal of that Union. A 
charge of that description should not be made when the Irish 
people demanded it. The words of Grattan were that the de- 
mand was made backed by the voice of the Irish. I re-echo 
that word, and the minister was bound to obey that call. We 
have made the experiment, and we find that the mind of the 
nation is in favor of a domestic legislatm^e. We have made the 
experiment — we did not do so without the enunciation of the 
voice of the Irish people. We have that voice from one end 
of the country to the other. The voice has gone abroad, and 
it only remains for the Irish people to call for the restoration 
of their Irish parliament. When I brought the question be- 
fore the House of Commons, the members who supported it 
were few — only one Englishman, and not one Scotchman ; but 
what was the change since that time with respect to the 
measure ? And was it not idle and absurd in the last degree 



SPEECH IN HIS OWN DEFENCE. 25^5 

to say tliat anything was intended save the regeneration of 
tlie country by the most peaceable means? What has the 
Crown read for you as part of the conspiracy? Why, the 
rules of the Association. 

[He proceeded to read the rules, which were already before the 
public] 

Mr. O'OonneU then continued. This, gentlemen, is the plan 
of the Eepeal Association. No alternative was held out by 
these rules but the fullest allegiance, the most perfect loyalty, 
and unqualified peace; and in this way, and no other, was 
agitation to be conducted. Yet, under these circumstances 
we have the charge of combination made against us, which 
amounts to one of conspiracy. That document, gentlemen, is 
given in proof against us. Well, however, to carry their proof 
further, the Crown have read two other documents. The first 
is, " The Reconstruction of the House of Commons," and the 
second, " The Renewed Action of the Irish parliament." The 
first of these was signed upon the 14th of May, 1840, and the 
second upon the 22d of August, 1843. Now, my lords, this 
has been read against us as evidence of a conspiracy. And 
although it has been read before, I think it my duty to read 
it again. 

Chief Justice. — What is the date of the document you are 
about reading from, Mr. O'Connell ? 

Mr. O'Connell.— The 14th of May, 1840, my lord. Mark, 
gentlemen, that after taking the scale of representation from 
the returns of the population of the different towns, it begins 
at page 7, thus : 

[Here the honorable and learned gentleman read the extract.] 

Mr. O'Connell then proceeded. Part of that document has 
been read by the Crown, and it distinctly states that by par- 
liamentary means, and by parHamentary means only, was Ee- 
peal to be obtained. I shall call your attention by-and-by to 
a portion of that document. The next document was also 
read, and I am entitled to the full force of all it contains. 
The Crown has no right to select portions from it, and I am 
entitled to the benefit of the unobjectionable parts, for they 
had no right to suppress them. 



256 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL o'CONNELL. 

[Mr. O'Connell then read " The Kenewed Action of the Irish 
parhament."] 

There, my lords, is the evidence for the prosecution — ^there 
is the evidence to prove a conspiracy — there is the evidence to 
prove illegal means — there is the evidence to prove illegal 
objects. Gentlemen of the jury, I put it to you, it is not my 
evidence, 'tis not I produces it, 'tis not we who have called 
upon it in our defence ; though it does contain, I think, an 
admii-able defence ; but it is brought before you on the part 
of the Crown, and produced by the Attorney-General ; that is 
the Attorney-General's evidence, and upon that evidence I 
call upon you to acquit us — you are bound to beheve it ; there 
is the plan for Eepeal, what fault do you find with it ? There 
is a theory introduced into it not called upon for practice, but 
I insist upon my right to discuss that theory. I may be 
wrong, but it is a great constitutional question which man is 
at hberty to discuss, and form his opinion upon. The opinion 
may be erroneous, but the right is undoubted, and I insist 
upon it that question ought to be considered in a way favor- 
able to the claims of Ireland. The competency of the Irish 
parliament to pass the Act of Union was discussed long 
before the Union itself was talked of. 

One of the works by which the revolution of 1688 was con- 
solidated, was a book written by Mr. Locke upon government. 
He wrote it for the purpose of sustaining the Whigs of that 
day — the WilHamite Whigs — to prove that James had no title 
to the throne, and that William was the lawful monarch of 
England in consequence of, what had happened. That book, 
gentlemen of the jury, was a class-book in Trinity College at 
the time the Union passed. It was a book out of which the 
young men were examined. Shortly after the Union it was 
found inconvenient to let it remain, and for some reason, I 
don't know the cause, but it was withdrawn. But at one time 
it was a book of authority, and requiring not any council to 
give it authority ; it was the great instrument by means of 
which the revolution of '88 was achieved, the principle of 
Avhich revolution no man admires more than I do. In Locke's 
book on government, I find : 



SPEECH IN HIS OWN DEFENCE. 257 

"The legislators cannot transfer the power of making laws into 
other hands, for it being but a delegated power from the people, they 
who have it cannot pass it over to others. The people alone can 
appoint the form of the commonwealth, which is by constituting the 
legislature and appointing in whose hands that shall be ; and when the 
people will have said, "We submit, and will be gpverned by laws made 
by such men and in such terms, nobody else can say other men shall 
make laws for them. The power of the legislature being derived from 
the people by a positive voluntary grant and institution, can be no other 
than what the positive grant conveyed, which being only to make laws 
and not to make legislatures, the legislatui'e can have no power to transfer 
their authority of making laws, or to place it in other hands." 

No doctrine can be more distinct. No delegated legislature, 
elected for a time, had power or authority to transfer the rights 
of their constituents to anybody else. Upon this subject 
Lord Grey was Tery explicit. 

Lord Grey, then Mr. Charles Grey, said in the British 
House of Commons : 

"Though you should be able to carry the measure, yet the people of 
Ireland would wait for an opportunity of recovering their rights, which 
they wiU say were taken from them by force." 

But I have stUl more espHcit authority. Hear this passage 
from the speech of Mr. Saurin, spoken on the 15th of March, 
1800, read by me on the trial of John Magee, in his presence, 
and adopted with manhness by the Attorney General of the 
day: 

"Those great men had assisted in the revolution of 1688— they had 
IDut down the slavish doctrines of passive obedience, they had declared 
that the King held his crown by compact with the people, and that when 
the Crown violated that compact, by subverting, or attempting to sub- 
vert, the constitution which was the guarantee and safeguard of that 
people's liberty, the crown was forfeited, and the nation had a right to 
transfer the sovereign power to other hands. They had no notion of the 
doctrines, which he was sorry to see now received — that the supreme 
power of the state was omnipotent, and that the people were bound to 
submit, whatever that power thought proper to inflict upon them. At 
that day such a monstrous proposition as this would not have been tol- 
erated, though now it began to raise its head and threaten the constitu- 
tion. But he for one would not admit it ; he would re-assert the doc- 
trine of the glorious revolution, and boldly declare in the face of that 
House, and of the nation, that when the sovereign power violated that com- 



258 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

pact, wliicli at its iustitution was declared to exist between the govern- 
ment and the people, that moment the right of resisting that power ac- 
crues. Whether it would be prudent in the people to avail themselves 
of that right would be another question ; but surely if there be this right 
in the nation to resist an unconstitutional assumption of power which 
threatened the laublic liberty, there could not occur a stronger case for 
the exercise of it than this measure would afford, if carried against the 
will of the majority of the nation. " 

Notliing can be more explicit than that constitutional doc- 
trine ; nothing can be more extensive than its operation. It 
was asserted by Saurin, quoting the highest authority of the 
heroes of the revolution of '88, so called, of the persons that 
carried that revolution, that by the English constitution the 
principle of passive obedience and non-resistance is totally 
foreign to our constitution — the right to resist — rather a deli- 
cate question — commences when the contract is broken ; but 
the existence of a constitutional right of that description shows 
it. The revolution itself would be void if this doctrine were not 
true. He then goes on to say : 

"If a Legislative Union should be so forced upon this country against 
the will of its inhabitants, it would be a nullity, and resistance to it 
would be a struggle against usurpation and not a resistance against law." 

That was alleged, too, with reference to a period after the 
Union was carried ; that is, looking to its having all the sanc- 
tion of form, the great seal of England on the one hand, the 
great seal of Ireland on the other, and the consent of the 
Crown given to it ; yet Mr. Saurin, talking constitutional doc- 
trine, declared it to be a nuUity, and resistance to it a matter 
of prudence. And in a second speech of his, which was pub- 
Hshed in the shape of a pamphlet : 

' ' You may make the Union binding as a law, but you cannot make it 
obligatory on conscience. It will be obeyed so long as England is strong, 
but resistance to it will be in the abstract a duty, and the exhibition of 
that resistance wiU be a mere question of prudence. 

I will be bound by it, says he, as a law, and so say I, but it 
will be void in conscience and constitutional principle. It wiU 
be obeyed as a law, but it wiU be the duty of the people to 
exhibit that resistance to it when it is prudent to do so. He 



SPEECH IN HIS OWN DEFENCE. 259 

did not mean by tliat resistance, force, or violence — ^lie meant 
legal and peaceable means — but by means adequate to tlie 
purpose while tliey keep witliin the precincts of the law. 
There is another authority — Lord Plunkett. He says : 

" Sii% I, in the most express terms, deny tlie competency of parliament 
to do this act. I warn you, do not dare to lay your hands on the con- 
stitution. I tell you, that if, circumstanced as you are, you pass this 
act, it will be a mere nullity, and no man in Ireland wiU be bound to 
obey it. I make the assertion deliberately. I repeat it. I call on any 
man who hears me to take down my words. You have not been elected 
for this j)urpose. You are appointed to make laws, and not legislatures 
— you are appointed to exercise the function of legislators, and not to 
transfer them — you are appointed to act under the constitution, and not 
to alter it ; and if you do so, your act is a dissolution of the government 
— you resolve society into its original elements, and no man in the land 
is bound to obey you. Sir, I state doctrines that are not merely founded 
on the immutable laws of truth and reason ; I state not merely the 
opinion of the ablest and wisest men who have written on the science of 
government ; but I state tlie i3ractice of our constitution as settled at the 
era of the revolution ; and I state the doctrine under which the House 
of Hanover derives its title to the throne. Has the King a right to 
transfer his Crown ? Is he competent to annex it to the Crown of Spain, 
or any other country ? No ; but he may abdicate it, and every man who 
knows the constitution, knows the consequence — the right reverts to the 
next in succession. If they all abdicate, it reverbs to the people. The 
man who questions this doctrine, in the same breath must arraign the 
sovereign on the throne as a usurper. Are you competent to transfer 
your legislative rights to the French Council of Five Hundred ? Are 
you competent to transfer them to the British parliament ? I answer — 
No ! If you transfer, you abdicate ; and the great original trust reverts 
to the people from whom it issued. Yourselves you may extinguish, but 
parliament you cannot extinguish. It is enthroned in the hearts of the 
people — it is enshrined in the sanctuary of the constitution — it is as im- 
mortal as the island which it protects. As well might the frantic suicide 
hope that the act which destroyed his miserable body should extinguish 
his eternal soul ! Again I therefore warn you. Do not dare to lay your 
hands on the constitution — it is above your powers. " 

Oh, it is a beautiful passage — ■" As wel might the frantic 
suicide hope that the act which destroys his miserable body 
should extinguish his eternal soul ! Again I therefore warn 
you. Do not dare to lay your hands on the constitution^it is 
above your powers." I insist on the truth of that constitu- 



260 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

tional law. I take the qualification as laid down by Saurin^ 
it is binding as a law while it continues to have the form and 
shape and pressure of law, but it does not bind on conscience 
or principle. Though it had been said to me: "Why, this 
would make all the acts which were passed since the Union 
void. I deny it, it would do no such thing. I say they are 
voidable, but not void. It has been said, you would, by that 
repeal even the Emancipation Act. If I could get the repeal 
of the Union, I would make you a present of Emancipation. 
Where do I find the principle of its being voidable, not void ? 
I find it in the language of Saurin. I may be wrong in this 
position, but I cannot be wrong to argue from it. It may be 
said that this act is to be obeyed, and it is to be considered 
as law. 

Gentlemen of the jury, the point was raised abeady in 1782, 
when the Irish parliament declared that no power on earth 
could bind the Irish people but the King, lords, and commons 
of Ireland ; and there was an act passed to that effect, the 
consequence of which was to do away with the authority of 
all laws passed in England, and which were binding on Ire- 
land, though they regulated the property of Ireland ; but 
Chief Baron Yelverton stepped in, and by his act, declared all 
laws passed in England to be binding in Ireland, and that 
they should continue to be so. But it may be said this is in- 
consistent with our allegiance — I deny it ; for this authority 
exists in the Queen, which can only be exercised tlu'ough her 
responsible minister. It is no derogation of her power — ^it is 
rather an increase of that power. And shall I be told this of 
a country which has made so many hregular successions? 
Eichard the Second was dethroned by parliament — so was 
Richard the Thii'd, and Henry the Seventh set up. Then 
also the royal succession was altered in the reign of Henry the 
Eighth, and settling nothing, there was another alteration at 
the time of the revolution in 1688 — so that there could not be 
anything illegal in discussing this question. Surely not. 
There may be a mistake — there may be an error, but there 
cannot be crime to discuss the matter publicly, undesignedly, 
and with the sustentation of the authorities I have addressed. 
You have Saurin, and Plunkett — you have Locke, you have 



SPEECH IN HIS OWN DEFENCE. 261 

Lord Grey giving his opinion in favor of it. I draw to a 
close. 

I come back to the evils of the Union, and I would look to 
every honest man to exert himself for its repeal. Would it not 
cure the odious evils of absenteeism ? It was calculated by 
an able man that nine million pounds a year, pass out of this 
country ; the railway commissioners reduce it to sis millions. 
Take the reduced amount, and I ask, did ever a country suffer 
such an odious drain of six million pounds of absentee money ? 
Six million pounds] raised every year in this country, not to 
fructify it — ^not to employ the people of the country, not to 
take care of the sick and poor or destitute — ^but six millions 
are transplanted to foreign lands — sent there but giving no re- 
turns — leaving poverty to those who enriched. Take six mil- 
lions for the last ten years. Look now at sixty millions drawn 
from this unhappy country. Take it for the next six years — 
can you in conscience encourage this ? There is a cant that 
agitation prevents the influx of capital. What is the meaning 
of that ? We do not want English capital ; leave us our own 
six millions, and we shall have capital in abundance. We do 
not want that left-hand benevolence which would drain the 
country with one hand, and let in niggardly with the other. 
There is another item which exhausts the resources of this 
country, and that to the amount of nearly X2,000,000 annually ; 
in the last year it]was so low as X700,000, but whether the one 
or the other, it is drawn out of the country never to return. 
There is again the Woods and Forests. That department re- 
ceives X74,000 a year out of Ireland in quit rents, etc. How 
was that expended for the last ten years? Between the 
Thames Tunnel, and to ornament Trafalgar Square. We 
want an additional bridge in Dublin. Why have we not the 
£74,000 for that purpose ? Have we not as good a right as 
that it should be expended on Trafalgar Square ? If we had 
the parhament in College Green, would that ,£74,000 be sent 
to adorn a square in London? Have we not sites and 
squares enough in Dublin for the purpose of public utility ? 

There are other evils attending this continued drain on the 
country. I remember there having been quoted in parhament 
the work of Mr. Young, a pohtical economist, who journeyed 



262 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

in Ii-eland in '78, wlio, in speaking of the increase of popula- 
tion, he accounted for it by the never-faihug bellyful of pota- 
toes — they had all a bellyful of potatoes, and to that he at- 
tributed the increase. But is that the case now ? Has not 
the country sensibly dechned ? is not even one meal of pota- 
toes a treat and a treasure ? 

According to the evidence of the commissioners of Poor-law 
inquiry the people are now in rags. Was this my language ? 
No, gentlemen. I appeal to yourselves — are they not reduced 
to misery and wretchedness, frittered away by periodical fam- 
ine ? — and there were six or eight since the Union. There was 
relief from England, while provisions were in quantities trans- 
ported from this country ; provisions were in the country while 
the people were perishing with hunger ; and those provisions 
were exported from the country. But the Poor-law Commis- 
sioners report the following frightful picture. But first let me 
tell you that the Population Commissioner's report shows the 
aggravation of the evil. The gentleman who made that report 
is a military officer — Captain Larcom — a man of science, of 
integrity, and of honor. He reports the state of the popula- 
tion to be this, that 30 per cent, of the town and city popula- 
tion were in abject poverty, and that 70 per cent, of the 
agricultural were in q,bject poverty. These are not my words, 
they are the words of Captain Larcom. Where, then, is the 
advantage of the Union, which has thus increased poverty, 
bringing pestilence, and involving our poor in misery and 
filth? Gentlemen, why should we not adopt any plan by 
which we would escape fi'om these horrors. To be sure, the 
Poor-law Commissioners go more into details. Mind you, gen- 
tlemen, this is evidence made on oath before the Poor-law 
Commissioners. Allow me to read some of it to you. 

" Oue family had but one meal for the space of three days— another 
subsisted on a quart of meal a day ; another lived on a httle boiled 
cabbages without anything to mix with them." 

Gentlemen, I will not harass your feelings by reading any 
more ; the book is fuU of them ; and are two milhons three 
hundred thousand of your fellow-countrymen to live in a state 
of positive destitution, and nothing to be done for them ? Is 
no effort to be made ? Permit me to call your attention to a 



SPEECH EST HIS OWN DEFENCE. 263 

few passages of a report of a meeting held last Monday week, 
in reference |o the sick and indigent of your city. [Mr. 
O'Connell then read an extract from Saunders, detailing the 
misery which pervaded the city,] Can any language of mine 
describe the misery which exists, more fully ? 

Another hideous feature of Captain Larcom's report is, that 
the population is diminishing by 70,000 in ten years. It is 
increased from the period of 1821 to 1831 , and from that to 
1841 the population has diminished by the number of 70,000, 
who would have been all reared up if they had anything to 
support them ; and are we to be hunted down, who are the 
friends of the poor ? Are we, who wish to have industry re- 
warded — are we, I ask it on every principle of sense and jus- 
tice — are we to be prosecuted and persecuted for seeking the 
means of relieving this distress ? "We have the means of relief 
in our power ; we hve in the most fertile country in the world, 
no country is in possession of such harbors, the earliest his- 
torical mention of which is made by Tacitus, admitting that 
our harbors were the best, and that consequently they were 
more crowded. The country is intersected with noble estua- 
ries. Ships of five hundred tons burden ride into the heart of 
the country, safe from every wind that blows. No country pos- 
sesses such advantages for commerce ; the machinery of the 
world might be turned by the water-power of Ireland. Take 
the map, and dissect it, and you will find that a good harbor 
is not more remote from any spot in Ireland than thirty miles. 
Why is not the country prosperous ? Did I not read for you 
of the unheard-of magical prosperity that followed her legis- 
lative independence? Did I not read extracts from the writ- 
ings and speeches of men most adverse to Ireland — of men 
most anxious to conceal her greatness, as evidence of her 
increasing prosperity under her parliament ? What happened 
once, win surely happen again. 

Oh, gentlemen, I struggle to rescue the poor from poverty, 
and to give wages and employment to those now idle — ^to keep 
our gentry at home by an absentee tax after the example of 
the government of last year, if by no other means, and com- 
pel them to do their duty to their country. I leave the case 
to you — I deny that there is anything in it to stain me with 



264 SELECT SPEECHES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

conspii-acy. I reject with contempt the appellation. I have 
acted in the open day in the presence of the government ; in 
the presence of the magistrates ; nothing was secret, private, 
or concealed ; there was nothing but what was exposed 
to the universal world. I have struggled for the restoration 
of the parhament to my native country. Others have succeed- 
ed in their endeavors, and some have failed ; but, succeed or 
fail, it is a glorious struggle. It is a struggle to make the 
first land on earth possess that bounty and benefit which God 
and nature intended. 




RICHARD LALOR SHIEL 



HON. RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 



MEMOIR OF RICHARD LALOR SHEIL, M. P. 



RicHAED Lalok Sheil, SO long associated with O'Connell, so like 
him in patriotism, so unlike him in his style of eloquence, was 
born on the 16th of August, 1791, in the county of Kilkenny. 

His first instructions were received at Bellevue, near Waterford, 
from an exiled French priest ; and he was subsequently, for a 
time, at an establishment in Kensington, conducted by the Prince 
de Broghe, where he mingled with the scions of the highest French 
nobihty. After spending some years at the Jesuit College at 
Stonyhurst, he entered Trinity College, where, devoting himself to 
classical hterature, he gave little promise of future oratorical ex- 
cellence. 

His maiden effort was a speech at a great Catholic meeting in 
Fishamble Street Theatre, which, in spite of its many youthful 
faults, attracted much attention. 

Selecting the profession of the law, he served his terms at Lm- 
cohi's Inn, and returned to Ireland in 1813. His father's failure 
threw him upon his own resources, and. his tragedies, " Adelaide," 
"The Apostate," "Bellamira," and "Evadne,"gave him the means 
of meeting the cost of a call to the bar. While slowly making his 
way to practice, he wrote his " Sketches of the Irish Bar." 

His chief attention was devoted however to politics, and in 1822 
he joined Mr. O'Connell in estabhshing the CathoHc Association. 
His extensive knowledge of French hterature gave his speeches 
the fire and impetuous tone of the revolutionary appeals of that 
country. Hence, he became exceediagly popular, and contributed 
greatly to the happy result of that agitation. A speech on the 
Duke of York drew upon him the hostihty of government, and 
a prosecution was instituted, but fell through ; and when, at last, 
his labors were rewarded by the great triumph of CathoHc Eman- 
cipation, he was made King's counsel. 



268 MEMOIR OP EICHARD LALO R SHEIL. 

He entered parliament in 1831, as member for the borough of. 
Milbourne Port, and subsequently represented Louth and Tippe- 
rary. For his support of government he would have been ap- 
pointed SoHcitor-General for Ireland, had not WiUiam IV. expressly 
opposed his appointment to any office. In 1839, however, he was 
named Vice-President of the Board of Trade, and was the first 
Catholic Commoner who was raised to the dignity of a Privy Coun- 
cillor in England. 

Still retaining his seat in parliament, though as a member for 
Dungarvan, he was next made Master of the Mint, and in 1851, 
Minister to Tuscany, but died soon after of a sudden attack of 
gout at Florence on the 25th of May, and Jies interred in the 
church of San Michele. 

His parhamentary speeches range over a variety of subjects, and 
were always heard with attention, their eloquence, power and 
learning, their keen satire and sharp invective, giving them an in- 
fluence possessed by few ; while his earlier efforts, and aU that 
called out his Irish or Cathohc feelings, showed the whole man, 
absorbed, interested, eloquent, sincere. 



SPEECHES OF RICHAED LALOR SHEIL. 



SPEECH ON THE DUKE OF YOEK. 



I HAYE waited until the cliair liad been left, and the meeting 
of the Association had terminated, in order to introduce a 
subject, which, as it is of a purely political nature, I refrained 
from mentioning during the discussions of the Association, 
lest it should give them a character of illegahty, and expose 
me to the imputation of having violated the law. I refer to 
the recent observations which have been made in the London 
papers upon the report of a speech of mine at a public dinner. 
I hope that I shall not be considered guilty of an overweening 
egotism, in drawing the attention of the individuals who happen 
to be assembled here, to what may appear to relate to myseK. 
But the topics on which I mean to address you are of pubhc 
as well as of personal interest. The truculent jocularity, and 
the spirit of savage jest, which have been ascribed to me, in 
expatiating on the infirmities of an illustrious person, have been 
regarded as characteristic of the moral habitudes of the body 
to which I belong. Thus, my vindication (for I do not rise to 
make an apology) extends beyond myself. Yet, let me be 
permitted to suggest, that it is most unfair to impute to a 
whole people the feelings or the sentiments of any single man. 
The Catholics of Ireland have been repeatedly held responsi- 
ble for the unauthorized and unsanctioned language of indi- 
viduals. Every ardent expression, every word that overflows 
with gall, every phrase uttered in the suddenness of unpremedi- 
tated emotion, -are converted iuto charges against seven mil- 
lions of the Irish people. 

It is deahng rather hardly with us, to make a loose after- 



270 SELECT SPEECHES OF RICHAKD LcVLOR SHEIL. 

dinner speech (the mere bubble of the mind), thrown off in 
the heedlessness of conviviahty, a matter of serious accusation 
against a whole community. I am not endeavoring to excuse 
myself upon any such plea as the Bishop of Kilmore might 
resort to, in extenuating his late oration in Cavan; on the 
cojitrary, I am prepared to show the circumstances which, in 
my mind, gave warrant to what I said. But I deprecate the 
notion that the language employed either by myself, or by any 
other individual, should be held to represent the opinions of 
the Irish Catholics. It has been stated, that laughter was 
produced by an ebullition of disastrous merriment. I will 
suppose that some two or three dozen of individuals in an ob- 
scure country town, did not preserve the solemnity with which 
any allusion to the maladies of an illustrious person ought to 
have been received, yet it is wholly unjust to hold the Irish 
Catholics responsible for their lack of sensibility. 

Having said this much, in order to rescue my fellow- labor- 
ers in the cause of emancipation from any responsibihty for 
individual demerit, I shall proceed to state what, in my judg- 
ment, affords a justification of the language employed upon 
the occasion to which I refer. I shall not deny that I enter- 
tain a sohcitude upon this subject. It is affectation on the 
part of any man to say, that he holds the censure of the press 
in no account. I cannot but be sensible that I am, from my 
comparative want of personal importance, more exposed to 
the injurious consequence of such a simultaneous assault. 
But I do not complain ; whoever intermeddles in public pro- 
ceedings must be prepared for occasional condemnation. It 
is one of the necessary results of notoriety, and I submit to it 
as a portion of my fate. I shall not, therefore, insinuate that 
there is any mock sentimentality in the amiable indignation 
with which the writers of the Whig journals have vented their 
censures upon what they call the barlDarous hilarity of an after- 
dinner harangue. I will not say, that it is easy to procure a 
character for high sentiment, by indulging in a paroxysm of 
editorial anger. Nay, I will give the gentlemen who have put 
so much sentiment into type, credit for sincerity, and without 
attempting to retahate, without referring them to their own 
comments upon the illustrious immorahties of the distinguished 



SPEECH ON THE DUKE OP YOEK. 271 

person to whom I have alluded, I shall state the grounds on 
which I conceive that I have been unjustly assailed. It is 
right that 1 should at once proceed to mention exactly what 
took place. 

The chairman of the meeting in question deviated from the 
ordinary usage at Roman CathoHc dinners, and, in compliance 
with what, from his inexperience, he considered to be a sort 
of formula of convivial loyalty, proposed the health of a man 
who is an object, to use the mildest phrase, of strong national 
disrelish. This, I confess, excited my indignation. I felt 
indignation, and where is the man who has one drop of manly 
blood in his heart, who would not feel indignation at being 
called on to offer a public homage to the individual, who " has 
an oath in heaven" against his country. I was tempted at 
first to remonstrate in the language of violent reproof against 
such an obnoxious toast, and I own that I felt it difficult to 
restrain the emotions which, in common with every Roman 
Catholic, I entertain towards the man who is the avowed and 
devoted antagonist* of Ireland. I recollected, however, that 
the chairman had done no more than comply with what he 
conceived to be a mere form, and I, therefore, preferred a 
mockery of the sentiment to any solemn denunciation. To the 
toast, the expression of a hope was annexed, that with the 
restoration of health, his feelings towards this country should 
undergo an alteration. " My gorge rose " at the notion of a 
man, whose hereditary obstinacy has been confirmed by an 
abjuration of his God, becoming a valetudinarian convert to 
liberal opinions. 

The transition from anger to derision is an easy one, and I 
could not help indulging in the luxury of scorn, (for it is not 
without its gratification,) and in the spirit of a gay malev- 
olence, but not of heartless ridicule, I stated, that I did not 
despair of seeing a consummation of the pious aspirations in 
which I had been called to join, when I recollected that pro- 
testations in politics might be as fleeting as those in love, and 
that as " Jove laughs at lovers' perjuries," I apprehended an 
unfortunate stability in " so help me God !" It was not unnat- 
ural that in this mood of unpremeditated mockery, I should 
make citations from certain celebrated epistles, where vows of 



272 SELECT SPEECHES OF RICHAKD LALOR SHEEL. 

everlastimg attachment were succeeded by infidelities of so 
much infelicitous renown. The report of what I said was not 
full, and although I do not affect to say, that the expressions 
imputed to me were not used, yet they are presented to the 
pubHc eye, without much concomitant matter, which would 
show them in, perhaps, a different light. I am sorry that the 
references to those celebrated letters were omitted. The fol- 
lowing were among the passages to which I alluded, and which 
I think will bear me out : 

" How can I sufficiently express to my sweetest, my darling love, the 
delight which her dear, her pretty letter gave me — milHons of thanks for 

it, my angel. Doctor O' delivered your letter. He wishes much 

to preach before royalty, and if I can put him in the way of it, I will. 
What a time it appears to me, my darling, since we parted, and how im- 
Ijatiently I look forward to next "Wednesday night. God bless you, my 
dear love ; ah ! believe me, even to my last hour, yours, and yours 
alone." 

Thus, you perceive that his affection was sealed with as 
strong a vow as his antipathy. The next letter gives vent to 
still more impetuous emotions. 

" How can I express to my darling love my thanks for her dear, dear 
letter ! Oh, my angel, do me justice, and be convinced that there never 
was a woman adored as you are. There are still, however, two whole 
nights before I shall clasj) my dear angel in my arms. Clavering is mis- 
taken, my dear, in thinking there are any new regiments to be raised. 
(Thereby hangs a tale.) Thanks, my love, for the hankerchiefs, which 
are dehghtful, and I need not, I trust, assure you, of the pleasure I feel 
in wearing them, and thinking of the dear hands who made them for me. 
Adieu, my sweetest love, until the day after to-morrow; and be as- 
sured, that until my last hour, I shall remain yours, and yours alone." 

It would be doing injustice to the celebrated writer of these 
erotic effusions, if I did not add that his recommendation of 
an Irish divine, was fully justified by the result, for the Morn- 
ing Post mentions, that while the doctor, with the Irish Ome- 
ga in his name, was preaching, the father of the illustrious 
individual was very attentive, and his mother and sisters were 
melted into tears. There is an amusement of a demi-literary 
land, commonly called "cross reading." I have sometimes 
put the " so help me God" oration into juxtaposition with the 
amatory lucubrations fi-om which I have given a few extracts. 



SPEECH ON THE DUKE OF YORK. 273 

and the reading stood thus : " It was connected with the 

serious illness of one now no more. Doctor O' wishes 

much to preach before royalty. I have never seen any rea- 
son to regret or change the line which I then took." " Oh ! 
my angel, do me justice and be convinced that there never was 
a woman adored as you are — there are still, however, two 
whole nights before I can clasp my angel in my arms." I feel 
very strongly on the whole subject — "ten thousand thanks, 
my love, for the handkerchiefs, which are delightful." Here 
he became sensibly affected. " I have been brought up all my 
life in these principles, and be assured that, to my last hour, 
I shall ever remain yours, and yours alone, ' so help me 
God!'" 

This amalgamation of his passions and his politics, in which 
his vices and his virtues are fused together, presents his 
character in a just light. But I should lay aside the language 
of derision. Why have I made these references to transac- 
tions, which, but for his relentless antipathies to my country, 
I should readily have forgotten? It is not in the spirit of 
wanton malignity and inglorious revenge. It is for the pur- 
pose of recalhng to the commentators upon myself the period 
at which that illustrious person was an object of as much 
aversion in England, as he is in Ireland at this day. It is for 
the purpose or branding his protestations about conscience, 
with all the scorn which they merit ; it is in order to exhibit, 
in their just light, his appeals to heaven ; to put his morality 
into comparison with his religion, and to tear off the mask by 
which the spirit of oppression is sought to be disguised. 
Conscience, forsooth ! It is enough to make one's blood boil 
to think on't! (That he who had pubhcly, and in the open 
common day, thrown off every coverlet of shame — who had 
wallowed in the blackest stye of profligate sensuality, an 
avowed and ostentatious adulterer, whose harlot had sustained 
herself by the sale of commissions, and turned footmen into 
brigadiers ! that he, — ^yet hot and reeking from the results of 
a foul and most disgraceful concubinage — should, without 
sense or memory or feeling, before the eyes of the whole em- 
pire, with the traces of his degradation still fresh upon him, 
presume to call upon the name of the great and eternal God, 



274 SELECT SPEECHES OF IJCHARD LALOll SHEIL. 

and in all the blasphemy of sacrilegious cant, dedicate himself 
with an invocation of heaven to the everlasting oppression of 
my country ! This it is that sets me, and every Irish Cath- 
oUc, on fire. This it is which raises, excites, inflames, and 
exasperates ! This it is that appUes a torch to our passions. 
Tliis it is that blows our indignation into flame. And it is this 
which, in the eyes of men, who stand the cold spectators of our 
sufferings, and yield us a fastidious sympathy in our wrongs, 
makes us appear factious, virulent and ferocious. This it is 
which makes them think that our mouths are foaming with 
rabid froth, and that there is poison mixed with madness in 
our fangs. 

I will furnish our antagonists with expressions of condem- 
nation : I wiU assist their vocabulary of insult — I will allow 
them to heap contumely upon contumely, and reproach upon 
reproach, and I will only answer, that if they were similarly 
situated, they would feel with the same poignancy, and speak 
with the same turbulent virulence as ourselves, — I will only 
say, in the language of the great master of human nature — 
"You should not speak of wliat you cannot feel." 

They cannot feel our condition, or appreciate our injuries to 
their full extent. I cannot say the same thing of the illustrious 
person to whom I have alluded. He has been placed in cir- 
cumstances somewhat analogous. Good God ! that such a 
man should tell us that we labor under no privation, and are 
subject to no wrong ! What were his own feelings — how did 
his heart beat when he was driven by the loud and reiterated 
cries of the English people, from his high office ! We are 
told by him that an exclusion from the honors of the State is 
no substantive injury. Did he forget his own letter to the 
House of Commons, in which he offered up an act of contrition 
for the consequences of his impure connection, and, acknow- 
ledging that his heart was almost broken, resigned his office ? 
Did the sacrifice cost him no pang ? Did the oblation which 
he made to the public feeling awake no painful sensation in 
his mind? Did not his cheek burn, and was not his face 
turned into scarlet, when he took the pen with a trembhng 
hand, (for it must have trembled,) and signed the instrument 



SPEECH ON THE DUKE OP YORK. 275 

of his resignation ? What a palsy must have seized his arm 
when he let the truncheon fap. ! And if in that dreadful crisis 
he felt a deep agony of heart,) should he not make some allow- 
ance for those who, for no other cause than a conscientious 
adherence to the rehgion in which they were born and trust 
to die, are excluded from those honors which are accessible to 
every other class of British subjects? What then is the 
charge against me ? That I have not enough of Joseph Sur- 
face in my character, to express a wish that the great obstacle 
to my hberty should not be removed ! My crime is, that I am 
not a hypocrite so base, as to allow a public libation to his 
name to pass without a comment. It was extorted from me, 
and my observations were not dictated by any cold and de- 
liberate malice toward the individual, but by the feehng of 
distaste which the announcement of such a toast produced in 
my mind. The sarcasm was directed to the sentiment and 
not to the man. With respect to the individual himself, I 
doubt not that in private hfe he is not destitute of good quali- 
ties. It is said that he is a person of honor, and of a kindly 
disposition. This I am not inchned to controvert ; and it 
would be an injustice not to add, that in many particulars, 
in his official capacity, he is entitled to praise. Diligence, 
punctuality, and an attention to the interests of the inferior 
class of persons, who are placed under his superintendence, 
are among his merits. But what compensation does good 
nature afford for the denial of liberty ? The mistakes of men 
in his condition are equivalent in their consequences to acts of 
dehberate criminaUty. Imbecility of understanding, and ob- 
stinacy of character, generate as many evil results as depravity 
of disposition, and, if I may employ the phrase, tyranny of 
heart. If I have adverted to conduct which, in a court, is 
called folly, but which in lower departments of society is called 
vice, it is not that I am anxious to exaggerate those weaknesses 
which exposed him to ridicule, into enormity. The absurdities 
in love, into which he fell, should rest in obhvion, if he did not, 
by talking of the pain to which the royal conscience would be 
exposed provoke a contrast between his life and his protesta- 
tions, and make us tear open the tattered curtains of concu- 
binage, in order to draw arguments against him from an adul- 



276 SELECT SPEECHES OF EICHAED LALOR SHELL. 

terous bed. Who, we inevitably ask, is the man who appeals 
to heaven ? Who is the man that entreats the House to con- 
sider the torture of conscience in which the sovereign is thus 
placed ? Who is it that lifts up his hands and exclaims, " So 
help me God ? " Is he a man of pure and unblemished hfe ? 
Is he a man of bright and immaculate morahty ? Is he a 
man distinguished for his fidelity to his pecuniary contracts, 
and who never allowed his humble creditors to be the victims 
of a hcentious prodigahty ? These are the interrogatories 
which this appeal to Almighty God necessarily forces upon us. 
We are rendered astute in the detection of errors, by the anx- 
iety to find fault, and look into the life of such a person with 
a microscopic scrutiny. It is much to be regretted that he 
has exhibited a solicitude to be hated by the Irish people. 
He has lost no opportunity to gather about his name the an- 
tiiDathies of this country. Witness his having accepted the 
office of Grand Master of an illegal association of men, com- 
bined together for the oppression of their fellow-countrymen, 
and who, perverting the word of God into the signal of mas- 
sacre, employed as a motto of their sanguinary institution, 
" Thy foot shall be steeped in the blood of thine enemies, and 
the tongue of thy dog shall be red with the lapping thereof.' ' 
Is it, then, to be expected, that, for the ex-Grand Master of an 
Orange Lodge we should entertain much tenderness and anx- 
iety, or that any man who has taken the active part which I 
have, in Cathohc affairs, should allow his name, when held up 
as an object of sympathy, to pass without some reprehensive 
comment ? I do not exult in any corporeal suffering which he 
may endure. If he suffers pain, and it were in my power to 
alleviate it, I should obey the instincts of my nature, and, 
dismissing my pohtical detestations, bear him relief. But if I 
am asked whether I should desire to see the misfortunes of my 
country prolonged, I answer, "the liberty of Ireland is too 
dear." He is, it is beyond ah doubt, the great obstacle to 
concession. What, then, do our opponents expect from us ? 
If they requne that excess of Christian philosophy, which 
should teach us to offer up our orisons for the degradation of our 
country, they ask too much. What would Catholic Emancipa- 
tion produce ? It would promote a whole people to their just 



SPEECH IN EEPLY TO ME. M'CLINTOCK. 277 

level in the State ; it would create tranquillity, and open the 
sources of national wealth in a land which is impoverished by 
its distractions; it would bind us in harmony together, and put 
an end to those dissensions by which we are rent asunder, and 
by which all the charities of life are blasted ; it would remove 
that spirit of animosity and virulence which fiUs the hearts of 
men with the worst passions, and makes them turn with an 
emulation of hatred upon each other ; it would, in one word, 
produce a great and permanent national reconciliation, and fix 
the stability of the British empire upon an everlasting foun- 
dation. These would, in my mind, be the glorious results of 
Cathohc Emancipation ; and I am only speaking th^ feeling 
of the whole Irish people, when I avow that I do not desire 
the perpetuation of the chief impediment that stands in its 
way, and thus obstructs a consummation which every lover of 
his country must most devoutly wish. 



SPEECH IN EEPLY TO ME. M'CLINTOCK. 



[Mr. M'Clintock, a Protestant gentleman of rank and fortune in 
the county of Louth, having attended a Roman Catholic meeting, 
held in the chapel of Dundalk, and delivered a speech containiug 
strictures on the Catholic reHgion, Mr. Sheil rose immediately 
after Mr. M'Clintock had concluded, and said :] 

The speech of Mr. M'Chntock (and a more singular exhibi- 
tion of gratuitous eloquence I have never heard) calls for a 
prompt and immediate expression of gratitude. He has had 
the goodness to advise us (for he has our interests at heart) to 
depute certain emissaries from the new order of Liberators to 
his HoHness at Eome, for the purpose of procuring a repeal 
of certain obnoxious canons of the Council of Lateran. If 
Mr. M'Clintock had not assured us that he Avas serious, and 
was not actuated by an anxiety to throw ridicule upon the 
religion and proceedings of those whom he has taken imder 
his spiritual tutelage, I should have been disposed to consider 
him an insidious fanatic, who, under the hypocritical pretence 
of giving us a salutary admonition, had come here with no 



278 SELECT SPEECHES OF RICHAKD LALOE SHEIL. 

other end than to fling vilification upon our creed, and to 
throw contumely upon the persons who take the most active 
part in the conduct of our cause. But knowing him to be a 
person of high rank and large fortune, and behoving him to 
possess the feelings as weU as the station of a gentleman, I am 
wiUing to acquit him of any such unworthy purpose, and do 
not believe that his object in addressing us, was to offer a 
dehberate and premeditated insult. He did not, I am sure, 
(for it would be inconsistent wdth the character which I have 
ascribed to him,) enter this meeting for the purpose of venting 
his bile into our faces, and voiding upon his auditory the foul 
calumnies against the religion of his countrymen, which fur- 
nish the ordinary materials of rhetoric in the Bible Societies, 
of which he is so renowned a member. He did not come here 
to talk of the Pope's golden stirrups to a mass of ignorant and 
unenlightened people, and to turn their belief into ridicule 
with his lugubrious derision. The topics which he selected 
were, indeed, singularly chosen, and when he talked of the 
Order of Liberators, I was disposed to take him for a wag. 
But I raised my eyes and looked him in the face, and j)erceiv- 
ing a person, whose countenance would furnish Cruikshank 
with a frontispiece to the Spiritual Quixote, I at once acquit- 
ted him of all propensities to humor, and could not bring my- 
self to beheve it possible that Mr. M'CHntock had ever in- 
tended to be droU. At one moment I confess I was in pain 
for him, for I was apprehensive that the language in which he 
expressed himself in regard to our clergy, and the forms and 
habitudes of Popery, would be apt to excite the indignation of 
a portion of this immense auditory ; but the spirit of courtesy 
prevailed over feelings of the people, and, so far from having 
been treated with disrespect, he was listened to with more than 
ordinary indulgence. He excited less of our anger than of 
our commiseration. I am uj)on this account rejoiced that he 
should have undertaken an exploit of this kind. We have 
given him evidence, at aU events, that, however intolerant the 
theory of our religion may appear to him, we are practically 
forbearing and indulgent. We allowed him to inveigh against 
the bridle and saddle of the Pope, without a remonstrance ; 
we permitted him to indulge in his dismal merriment, and his 



SPEECH IN EEPLY TO ME. M'CLINTOCK. 279 

melancliolj'- ridicule, without a murmur ; lie will therefore 
have derived a useful lesson from his experiment upon the 
public patience, and when he shall recount to his confederates 
of the Bible Society his achievements amongst us, he will 
have an opportunity of telling them that we are far more tol- 
erant of a difference of opinion than the pious auditory which 
Mr. M'Clintock is in the habit of addressing. I have occa- 
sionally attended meetings of the Bible Society, and observed 
that whoever ventured to remonstrate against the use of the 
Apocalypse as a Spelling Book, incurred the indignation of 
the assembly, 

I remember to have heard it suggested, that the amatory 
pictures which are offered to the imagination in the Canticle of 
Canticles, were not exactly fitted to the private meditation of 
young ladies when the countenances of the fair auditors imme- 
diately assumed an expression of beautiful ferocity, and they 
looked like angels in a passion. Henceforth, however, Mr. 
M'Clintock may be able to refer to the example of his Koman 
Catholic auditors in recommending to his pretty votaries at 
the Bible Society, that meekness and forbearance of which the 
Roman Cathohc ladies have this day afforded a model. In 
this view the exhibition of Mr. M'CUntock may be considered 
as Hkely to be productive of some utility. But, after having 
thus endeavored to convey to him an expression of the grati- 
tude which we feel for this interposition of his advice, it is 
right that I should, after giving him every credit for the bene- 
volent sincerity of his motives, examine into the details of his 
admonition, and endeavor to ascertain how far it is judicious 
upon our part to follow the course which he has taken on him- 
self to point out ; let me, however, be allowed to make one 
jareHminary remark. On rising he informed us, that he mere- 
ly obeyed the impulse of the moment and yielded to the sud- 
den suggestions of the Spirit, in communicating his advice. I 
was not a little surprised that he immediately afterwards pro- 
duced a series of voluminous extracts from the theological his- 
tory of the Catholic Church, which, together with certain face- 
tious references to the Cardinals, constituted the substance of 
his discourse. In any other man I should take this elaborate 
accumulation of ecclesiastical learnins- as evidence that he had 



280 SELECT SPEECHES OP RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 

made some preparation for a somewhat adventurous enterprise, 
and that he had come furnished with a x^anoply from the 
armory of heaven. I should have supposed that he had taken 
some time in collecting so many weapons of celestial temper. 
But Mr. M'CHntock is a peculiar favorite above ; he was sup- 
plied, no doubt, with these valuable notes by a preternatural 
means ; some angelic influence must have been exercised in 
his favor, and a hand invisible to our profaner eyes, furnished 
him on the instant with those large extracts from the Canons 
of the Council of Lateran. 

[Here Mr. M'Olintock rose with some appearance of displeasure, 
and said that Mr. Shell was misrepresenting him. He had stated 
that he had the notes for some time in his pocket] 

Mr. Sheil. — I certainly had understood that Mr. M'CHn- 
tock intimated that he had come without preparation to this 
meeting ; I am now, however, to understand that he is not in- 
debted for his recondite erudition to any sudden irradiation 
from heaven, but that he previously accumulated this mass of 
citations against Popery. Indeed, the external aspect of the 
document sustains his present allegation, for the " Sibylline 
leaves " which were ]3roduced by him, seemed a little sere and 
faded. I perceive that Mr. M'Chntock does not take the re- 
marks which I have presumed to make in very good part. In 
the Evangehcal Societies where he makes so, conspicuous a 
figure, he has it all his own way. He is not much accustomed 
to the collisions of intellect which are incident to popular de- 
bate ; but he must not expect that a person having so much 
veneration as I have for the Pope's bridle and saddle, to which 
he has adverted with such a pleasant unction, should not re- 
turn his compliment to my rehgion, and give him a few hints 
upon his own. 

Mr. M'CHntock is no ordinary person. He is the uncle of 
Lord Roden, and the near relative of Lord Oriel ; he is, be- 
sides, nearly aUied to the Archbishop of Tuam, of Biblical re- 
nown, and has obtained no little notoriety by his epistolary 
controversies with Doctor Curtis. The observations of such a 
man ought not to be allowed to pass without comment ; I 
shaU, therefore, proceed. Mr. M'CHntock recommends us to 



SPEECH IN KEPLY TO MR. M'CLINTOCK. 281 

procure a repeal of the canons of the Council of Lateran. I • 
am apprehensive that Mr. M'Clintock has blinded himself with 
the dust of those ponderous folios which he must needs have 
studied, in order to exhibit such a farrago of theology as he 
lias produced to-day. The Councils of Nice, of Constance, of 
Lateran, and of Trent, are as familiar to him as " household 
words." He has thrown them into what the lawyers call a 
hotch-potch together. I shall not undertake to follow him 
through so much dark and mysterious erudition ; but, at the 
same time, I shall gra]pple with the principle upon which his 
reference to the Councils are founded. He tells us that we 
ought to procure a repeal of the denunciations against heresy 
before we can expect Emancipation. 

I beg leave to suggest the propriety of putting Mr. M'Clin- 
tock into parhament, in place of his kinsman, Mr. Leslie Fos- 
ter, in order to enable him to move for a repeal of the laws 
against witchcraft, passed by a Protestant legislature in the 
reign of James I. Thus a three-fold object will be attained. 
We shall, in the first place, get rid of Mr. Leslie Foster ; in 
the second place, we shall reward Mr. M'Clintock for his well- 
meant admonitions ; and in the third place,, we shall afford an 
opportunity to Mr. M'Chntock of giving the same earnest ex- 
hortations to his fellow-legislators, to relieve their rehgion 
from the odium with which the enactments of superstition 
ought to be pursued. But let me put the language of mockery 
aside, and ask Mr. M'Clintock whether it be not as unjust to 
charge the Catholics of the nineteenth century with edicts 
passed some centuries ago, as it would be to impute to the 
Protestant rehgion the fanatical absurdity which dictated the 
statute against the " feeders of evil spirits." 

It is perfectly obvious that Mr. M'Clintock has conveyed a 
charge of intolerance in the shape of advice. He deserves a 
serious answer. I shall, in the first place, point out the cir- 
cumstances under which any denunciations against heresy 
were pronounced by the assembled hierarchy of the Christian 
world. I shall show, in the second place, that the spirit of 
Protestantism was, at one period, fully as sanguinary and fe- 
rocious as that which Mr. M'Chntock has ascribed to the ge- 
nius of Popery, in what he might call the night of its darkest 



282 SELECT SPEECHES OF RICHAKD LALOR SHEIL. 

domination. And I shall give jDroof to Mr. M'Clintock, in tlie 
third place, that while the faith of Roman Catholics remains 
unchanged, the principles by which the civil executive enforced 
an uniformity of creed, have been long since abandoned. If, 
like Mr. M'Clintock, I were a reader of Saint Peter, without 
note or comment, I might refer him to the second chapter, in 
which he speaks of " false teachers who shall bring in damna- 
ble heresies ;" but I know that Mr. M'Clintock has no great 
relish for St. Peter, or for his successors. 

The Roman Catholic divines were sufficiently fluent in 
quoting the authority of the Scriptures, when the State deemed 
it expedient to call their sanction in aid of the enactments of 
civil pohcy. Good warrant for the writ, " de hceretico combu- 
rendo,'' might readily be found in the Testament, both old and 
new. But I thank God that it was never a part of the faith of 
Roman Catholics, that the light of the Gospel ought to be 
propagated with the fagot, or that the darkness of heresy 
ought to be dispelled with the fl.ames of an auto defe. There 
is a manifest distinction between faith, which consists of a be- 
hef in certain religious tenets, and the practical measures by 
which that faith is sought to be enforced. A belief in tran- 
substantiation is a part of our creed, but the punishment of 
heresy is matter not of belief, but of regulation, and cannot be 
said to constitute any portion of the Roman Cathohc faith. 

It is perfectly true, that at a period when the Roman Cath- 
ohc religion was the only form under which Christianity was 
professed, a system of discipline was adopted, of which the 
object was to repress innovation, and it would be easy to find 
many plausible arguments among Protestant divines, in sup- 
port of that restraint upon novelties in rehgion, which, under 
the pretence of preserving the repose of society, were intro- 
duced by the lawgivers of a darker age. The intimate con- 
nexion between the State and the Church, produced ordi- 
nances in the one, which were intended to be the j)rops of the 
other. By a reciprocity of corruption, they infected each 
other — statesmen were turned into divines, and divines into 
statesmen. This was an unnatural transformation, and pro- 
duced the worst results. 
If we enter into a comparison of the enormities committed 



SPEECH IN REPLY TO MR. M'CLINTOCK. 283 

by tlie Catholics in opposing, or the Protestants in extending, 
the doctrines of the Eeformation, perhaps it would be difficult 
to strike a balance of atrocity between them. If any excuse 
could be urged, (but there can be none,) it might be suggested 
on the part of the professors of the old religion, that they were, 
to use a legal illustration, in possession of the estate, and op- 
posed every casual ejector who came to trespass on their ex- 
clusive property in heaven. The Protestants who throw im- 
putations on our Church, should consider the position from 
which their projectiles are flung, and should remember that 
they live in houses of brittle materials. 

It is notorious that almost, with the single exception of 
Melanchthon, all the earlier Reformers were infuriated perse- 
cutors. After hunting Popery down, they turned like mad 
wolves upon each other. The progress of the Reformation is 
tracked with fire and blood. It is unnecessary to go through 
the details of enormity on the Continent, but as Mr. M'Chn- 
tock seems to belong to the Calvinistic department of Chris- 
tianity, (I should so collect from his aspect,) he will pardon me 
for referring him to Geneva, that metropolis of orthodoxy, for 
illustrations of the peaceful and forbearing spirit with which 
the Fathers of the Reformed Religion enforced their revela- 
tions. They tortured, they emboweled, they consumed with 
slow fires whoever presumed to question their delegation from 
heaven. 

But let us turn to England. Ifc is but a few days since I 
perused a letter by that martyr of Reformation, the detesta- 
ble Cranmer, in which he writes, that inasmuch as one Fryth 
did not think it necessary to beheve in the corporal presence 
of Christ in the Sacrament, and held, in this point, much 
after the opinion of (Ecolampadius, it was necessary to hand 
him over to the secular power, " where," as Cranmer says, 
" he, Fryth, looked every day to go to the fire." Well might 
he exclaim, " this guilty hand ;" well might the Patriarch of 
Reformation, while he was himself perishing at the stake, 
utter that terrific cry ; but he should have apphed it not to 
the recantation of his opinions, but to the sanguinary mis- 
deeds to which that hand had given its sanction. If the 
mother of Fryth had stood beside him, might she not have 



SELECT SPEECHES OF RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 284 

cried, " Your groans are like tlie groans of my son, "and your 
screams remember me of his cries," But why refer to Cran- 
mer, when I may resort to the amiable and benevolent Henry, 
the Father of the English Reformation. Protestants disclaim 
that celebrated Prince ; but really they should be held respon- 
sible for his barbarities, when they impute to us every delin- 
quency practised by the professors of our creed. Let them 
deny it as they ■\\ill ; if we trace the Protestant religion to its 
fountainhead, however it may have been purified in its pro- 
gress, we shall find its sources stained with blood. 

But perhaps Mr. M'Clintock will say, that it pleased Prov- 
idence to choose an unworthy instrument, in the ferocious 
Henry, for the accomphshment of its sacred pm^ooses ; and 
that when we find the cradle of their reUgion rocked in mur- 
der, adultery, and incest, we see an exemplification of the ten- 
dency of Heaven to deduce good from ill. It must be con- 
fessed, that Providence displayed a somewhat fantastic and 
capricious taste in choosing an execrable tyrant for the exe- 
cution of its holy designs. It may be said, that the hglit only 
dawned in the mind of Henry — that the Spirit did not visit 
him in its fullest illumination — and that although the morning 
of the Beformation was dark and gloomy, and many a bloody 
cloud attended the ascending luminary, yet that in a little 
while the truth appeared in all its glory, and spread into the 
full splendor of day. WeU, let me pass at once to the 27th of 
Ehzabeth, by which it was enacted, that " every Romish 
priest should be hanged until he was half dead, then should 
have his head taken off, , and his body cut in quarters — that 
his bowels should be drawn out and burned, and his head 
fixed upon a pole in some public place." What wUl Mr. 
M'Chntock say to this ? Does he think the charge of intoler- 
ance is justly confined to the rehgion of Rome ? 

I will not pursue the spirit of persecution through the va- 
riety of legislative enactments in Avhich it is exemphfied. 
What need I dq more than refer to the Penal Code enacted in 
this country, by which the son was incited to revolt against 
father, and parricide was converted into a sort of political 
duty by the law. It was of this code that Sir Toby Butler said, 
" It is enough to make the hardest heart bleed to think on't/' 



SPEECH IN EEPLY TO ME. M'CLINTOCK. 285 

It would be an almost endless labor to go tlirougli all the 
proofs, with, whicli history may be said to teem,, of the fero- 
cious spirit by which sectarian power has been almost uni- 
formly displayed. I can readily produce gibbet for gibbet 
against Mr. M'Clintock ; and the only difference between us 
would be, that Catholics had a larger field for the exercise of 
that unfortunate tendency, which appears to belong to the na- 
ture of man. The Protestants, however, made good use of 
their time. The truth is, that both parties are to blame, and 
should avoid its recriminating retrospect. How much more 
wise it would be of Mr, M'Clintock, instead of referring us to 
the Council of Lateran, to refer his fellow-beUevers to the pro- 
gress of events, to the universal diffusion of intelhgence, and 
the material change which the religion both of Catholics and 
of Protestants has undergone. The sphere of human know- 
ledge has advanced, and the Cathohc Church has been car- 
ried along in the universal progression. Our faith is the 
same, but our system of ecclesiastical government is wholly 
changed. 

Persecution cannot be considered as an ingredient of a 
man's creed. It may, indeed, be the result of his principles, 
but cannot be considered as of the essence of his belief. It 
were wiser for Mr. M'Clintock to look at the declarations of 
the Catholic Universities, denying the abominable doctrines 
imputed to us — to the recent protest of the Catholic bishops of 
Ireland, and to the oath which every Roman Cathohc takes, 
than to the moth-eaten volumes with which he has been re- 
plenishing his mind. Let him beware of these studies — "the 
insect takes the color of the leaf upon which it feeds." and I 
know of no worse color than the black letter repertories of 
theology which have supplied his intellectual nourishment. 

But let us go beyond protests, and oaths, and declarations, 
and come to facts. The liberality of the Catholics is not con- 
fined to mere speculation. Look at Hungary, where, for up- 
wards of forty years, all distinctions between Protestant and 
Catholic have been abohshed. Mr. M'Clintock has, en passant, 
inveighed against Charles X. and the Jesuits. Poor gentle- 
man, he has the same fear of the Jesuits as Scrub in the play, 
who rushes out in agony of terror, and exclaims, " murder, 



286 SELECT SPEECHES OF EICHAKD LALOE SHEIL. 

robbery, the Pope and the Jesuits." It is not my office to de- 
fend the intellect of Charles X, I believe that if the brains 
of Protestant and Cathohc royalty were weighed, the scales 
would be found in a state of complete equipoise. I hardly 
think that the Guelphs would weigh the beam to the carpets, 
and if the head of his Eoyal Highness the Duke of York were 
to be examined by Professor Spurzheim, he Avould probably 
find in it an equally faithful exemplification of his theory. On 
the head of the Duke of Cumberland, indeed, some bumps, as 
they are technically called, might be discovered, which the 
ghost of Selis should be conjured to explain. 

But a truce to laughter. Protestants complain of the intol- 
erant spirit of the French law. In the first place the Hugue- 
nots are provided with churches at the public expense. In 
Eue St. Honore, in Paris, they have a splendid place of wor- 
ship given them by the State, and their clergy are not only 
paid as well, but much better, than the Roman Catholic eccle- 
siastics. They receive one third more. Let Mr. M'Clintock 
look to the French character, and he will find that by the 
third article, " aU Frenchmen are equally admissible to all civil 
and military employments," and by the fifth, " each indiviuual 
is allowed to profess his rehgion with an equal freedom, and 
obtains for his form of worship, the same protection." But 
all these arguments, derived both from reason and from fact, 
have no weight, as long as we consider the Pope infallible. 
Mr. M'Clintock informs us, that no human being is exempt 
from frailty, and refers to King David, and the interesting 
story of Bathsheba. He has also quoted the uxorious propen- 
sities of his son. 

Mr. M'Clintock seems well versed in the Old Testament, 
and appears well qualified to make elegant extracts of its more 
enticing incidents for the meditation of young ladies. They 
would make a neat volume, especially if adorned with prints ; 
and some fair devotee well skilled in di-awing should be ap- 
plied to, to throw her imagination into the pencil, and furnish 
illustrations. A pretty subject that of David and Bathsheba, 
to which Mr. M'Clintock has adverted. He passed with much 
rapidity of transition to his Holiness, and I own I expected a 
few anecdotes of the Borgia family, to beguile the tedium of 



SPEECH IN REPLY TO MR. M'CLINTOCK. 287 

debate. However, lie confined himself to tlie equestrian habi- 
tudes of his Holiness. I beg to apprise Mr. M'Clintock, that 
I, for one, do not consider the Pope infallible — nor is such an 
opinion maintained by our church. Koman Catholics indeed 
believe that truth resides in their church, as most people beheve 
their own to be the best religion. Mr. M'Clintock will allow 
me to interpret the scriptures as I think proper. St. Paul and 
he differ, indeed, on that head, as St. Paul condemns " private 
interpretation. But I meet Mr. M'Clintock on his own ground, 
and tell him that I find texts in Scripture which, according 
to my private construction, warrant a belief in the infallibility 
of the church. I may be wrong, but I deduce that position 
from the Scriptures, and the first use I make of them is, to 
bow down my judgment to the church. I need not repeat the 
texts, " Thou art Peter." " Lo, I will be with you to the end 
of time," and so forth. I by no means insist on Mr. M'Chn- 
tock adopting my construction, but upon his own principles, 
he must not quarrel with the inference which I draw from the 
Bible. I have as much right to draw that conclusion from the 
Bible, as he has to believe in his election from eternity, which he 
derives from the same source. Why then should I be debarred 
of my civil rights for believing that truth must reside some- 
where, and for choosing to give it a residence in the Catholic 
Charch, instead of the bottom of a well. At all events the 
arguments on my side are plausible enough to have imposed 
on many great and good men ; and I must be pardoned for 
following, like Mr. M'Clintock, my own vagary in religion. 
There is, in my mind, this difference between Mr. M'Clintock' 
and myself, I believe the church to be infallible, and he be- 
heves himself to be so. 

Me. M'Clintock.— Not at all. 

Me. Sheil. — I shall show Mr. M'Clintock that this conclu- 
sion is the necessary consequence of his premises. If every 
Protestant is entitled to draw his religion from the Bible, it 
follows that he must be capable so to do. If he be capable 
so to do, he must be enlightened by heaven, and if enlightened 
by heaven, as God does not lead us astray, he must be infalli- 
ble. A member of the Bible Society gives the Scriptures to 
his child, and desires him to make out his faith from them, — 



288 SELECT SPEECHES OF IIICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 

" Here, (he says,) my sweet little divine, is the Book of Life — 
do not attend to what the priests and cardinals tell you, but 
study the Trinity by yourself ; investigate the mystery of the 
Incarnation, and solve the prophetical problems of the Apoca- 
13'pse — and, my dear boy, if ever you are in want of amuse- 
ment, read the pleasant story of David and Bathsheba, and 
the other instructive anecdotes which you will find interspersed 
in this holy book. God will preserve your imagination from 
taint, and fill with his divine grace every little theologian of 
thirteen. And now good bye, and go and play with the Gospel 
at ' hide and go seek.' " So much for divinity in its teens. 
But seriously speaking, if the boy be not infallible, why give 
the Bible to the boy ? It comes to tliis — I am for corporate, 
and Mr. M'Clintock for individual infallibihty. I prefer the 
decrees of councils — he prefers the rhapsodies of conventicles. 
I hke the religion of Pascal, and Fenelon, and Bossuet, and 
Arnaud, while Mr. M'Clintock and the ladies of Dublin have 
a predilection for the new apostle of the Gentiles — Baron 
Munchausen Katerfelto Ferdinand Mendez Pinto Wolff, for- 
merly of Monmouth street, London, lately of the Propaganda 
in Eome, and now Chief Propagator to the Ladies' Auxiliary 
Bible Society, Dublin. Kirwan used to say, that the teachers 
of new religions were Hke the soldiers who tore the seamless 
garment of our SaAdour to pieces. This converted Hebrew, 
after selling old clothes through Germany, comes hawking 
some shreds of new-fashioned Christianity in Dubhn. The 
fellow's name and aspect reminds me of Dryden's description 
of the fanatics : 

" More liaughty tlian the rest, the Wolffish race — 
Appear with belly gaunt and famished face — 
Never was so deforraed a beast of grace." 

I commend Mr. M'Clintock to this worthy missionary from 
Syria, of whose infallibility and fidehty in the commemoration 
of his own wonders, I presume he makes no question, and 
gives him a decided preference to Prince Hohenlohe. Good 
heaven ! to what a pitch fanaticism has arrived ! An ignorant 
Israelite arrives in Dubhn, defies all the doctors of the Chm-ch 
of Eome, in the world, to meet him in intellectual combat, 
directs that answers should be inclosed from all the universe 



SPEECH AT THE CLARE ELECTION. 289 

to Mr. Hogan, of York street, and is fortliwitli encompassed 
with all the rank and beauty of Dublin. Warren, with his 
blacking, is nothing to this ; and Ingleby, " the emperor of 
conjurers," who defied every other juggler, sinks into misera- 
ble diminution before this master of celestial legerdemain. 
But, sir, enough of these topics, which are very foreign from 
those on which I had intended to address you. Mr. M'Clin- 
tock has broken in upon the ordinary course of our discus- 
sions, and has, perhaps, enlivened this meeting with some 
diversity of matter. I hope we shall often see him amongst 
us, and that some of liis associates of the Bible Society will do 
us the favor to accompany him ; for, although we are greatly 
surpassed by them in the riches of diction, extent of acquire- 
ment, gTace of elocution, and power of reasoning, yet the 
truth upon our side almost renders us their match. Having 
spoken thus much, I shall not enter into any of the subjects 
suggested by your resolutions, but shall content myself with 
simply stating, that for the vote of thanks you have given me 
for my professional exertions at the election, to the success of 
which you are pleased to say that I contributed, I am deeply 
grateful. 



SPEECH AT THE CLAEE ELECTION. 



[At the close of the poll, Mr. Shell spoke in the following 

terms :] 

I am anxious to avail myself of this opportunity to make a 
reparation to Mr. Fitzgerald. Before I had the honor of hear- 
ing that gentleman, and of witnessing the conciliatory de- 
meanor by which he is distinguished, I had in another place 
expressed myself with regard to his political conduct, in lan- 
guage to which I believe that Mr. Fitzgerald referred upon 
the first day of the election, and which was, perhaps, too 
deeply tinctured with that animosity which is almost insepa- 
rable from the passions by which this country is so unhappily 
divided. It is but an act of justice to Mr. Fitzgerald to say, 



290 SELECT SPEECHES OF RICHARD L.VLOR SHEIL. 

that, however we may be under the necessity of opposmg him 
as a member of an administration hostile to our body, it is 
impossible to entertain towards him a sentiment of individual 
hostility ; and I confess that, after having observed the admi- 
rable temper with Avhich he encountered his antagonists, I 
cannot but regret that, before I had the means of forming a 
just estimate of his personal character, I should have indulged 
in remarks in which too much acidity may have been infused. 
The situation in which Mr. Fitzgerald was placed was pecu- 
liarly trying to his feehngs. He had been long in possession 
of this county. Though we considered him as an inefficient 
friend, we were not entitled to account him an opponent. Un- 
der these circumstances, it may have appeared harsh, and 
perha23s unkind, that we should have selected him as the first 
object for the manifestation of our power ; another would have 
found it difficult not to give way to the language of resent- 
ment and of reproach, but so far from doing so, his defence of 
himself was as strongly marked by forbearance as it was by 
ability. I thought it, however, not altogether impossible, that 
before the fate of this election was decided, Mr. Fitzgerald 
might have been merely practising an expedient of wily con- 
ciliation, and that when he appeared so meek and self-con- 
trolled in the midst of a contest which would have provoked 
the passions of any ordinary man, he was only stifling his 
resentment, in the hope that he might succeed in appeasing 
the violence of the opposition with which he had to contend. 
But Mr. Fitzgerald, in the demeanor which he has preserved 
to-day, after the election has concluded with his defeat, has 
given proof that his gentleness of deportment was not affected 
and artificial ; and, now that he has no object to gain, we can- 
not but give him as ample credit for his sincerity, as we must 
give him for that persuasive gracefulness by which his man- 
ners are distinguished. Justly has he said that he has not 
lost a friend in this country ; and he might have added that, 
so far from having incurred any diminution of regard among 
those who were attached to him, he has appeased to a great 
extent the vehemence of that pohtical enmity in which the 
associate of Mr. Peel was not very unnaturally held. 

But, sir, while I have thus made the acknowledgment which 



SPEECH AT THE CLARE ELECTION 291 

was due to Mr. Fitzgerald, let me not disguise my own feel- 
ings of legitimate, but not, I hope, offensive exultation at tlie 
result of this great contest, that has attracjted the attention of 
the English people beyond all example. I am not mean 
enough to indulge in any contumelious vaunting over one who 
has sustained his defeat with so honorable a magnanimity. 
The victory which has been achieved has been obtained not 
so much over Mr. Fitzgerald as over the faction with which I 
excuse him to a great extent for having been allied. 

A great display of power has been made by the Catholic 
Association, and that manifestation of its influence over the 
national mind I regard as not only a very remarkable, but a 
very momentous incident. Let us consider what has taken 
place in order that w^e may see this singular pohtical j^heno- 
menon in its just light. It is right that we attentively survey 
the extraordinary facts before us, in order that we may derive 
from them the moral admonitions which they are calculated 
to supply. What then has happened? Mr. Fitzgerald was' 
promoted to a place in the Duke of Wellington's councils, and 
the representation of this great county became vacant. The 
Catholic Association determined to oppose him, and at first 
view the undertaking seemed to be desperate. Not a single 
Protestant gentleman could be procured to enter the lists, and 
in the want of any other candidate, Mr. O'Connell stood for- 
ward on behalf of the people. 

Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald came into the field encompassed with 
the most signal advantages. His father is a gentleman of 
large estate, and had been long and deservedly popular in 
Ireland. Mr. Fitzgerald himself, inheriting a portion of the 
popular favor with a favorite name, had for twenty years been 
placed in such immediate contiguity to power, that he was 
enabled to circulate a large portion of the influence of govern- 
ment through this fortunate district. There is scarcely a sin- 
gle family of any significance among you, which does not labor 
under Mr. Fitzgerald's obligations. At this moment it is only 
necessary to look at him, with the array of aristocracy beside 
him, in order to perceive upon what a high position for vic- 
tory he was placed. He stands encompassed by the whole 
gentry of the county of Clare, who, as they stood by him iu 



292 SELECT SPEECHES OF KICHAKD LALOR SHEIL. 

the hour of battle, come here to cover his retreat. Almost 
every gentleman of rank and fortune appears as his auxiUarj ; 
and the gentry, by thek aspect at this instant, as well as by 
their devotedness during the election, furnish evidence that in 
his person their own cause was to be asserted. To this com- 
bination of favorable circumstances — to the pohtical friend, to 
the accomphshed gentleman, to the eloquent advocate, at the 
head of all the patrician opulence of the county, what did we 
oppose ? We opposed the power of the Catholic Association, 
and with that tremendous engine we have beaten the cabinet 
minister, and the phalanx of aristocracy by which he is sur- 
rounded, to the ground. Why do I mention these things ? Is 
it for the purpose (God forbid that it should !) of wounding the 
feelings or exasperating the passions of any man ? No, but in 
order to exhibit the almost marvellous incidents which have 
taken place, in the hght in which they ought to be regarded, 
and to present them in all their appalling magnitude. 

Protestants who hear me, gentlemen of the county Clare, 
you whom I address with boldness, perhaps, but certainly not 
with any purpose to give you offence, let me entreat your 
attention. A baronet of rank and fortune. Sir Edward 
O'Brien, has asked whether this was a condition of things 
to be endured : he, has expatiated upon the extraordinary 
influence which has been exercised in order to effect these sig- 
nal results ; and, after dwelhng upon many other grounds of 
complaint, he has with great force inveighed against the sev- 
erance which we have created between the landlord and ten- 
ant. Let it not be imagined that I mean to deny that we 
have had recourse to the expedients attributed to us ; on the 
contrary, I avow it. We have put a great engine into action, 
and applied the entu'e force of that powerful machinery which 
the law has placed under our control.. We are masters of the 
passions of the people, and we have employed our dominion 
with a terrible effect. 

But, sir, do you, or does any man here, imagine that we 
could have acquired this formidable abihty to sunder the 
strongest ties by which the different classes of society are fas- 
tened, unless we found the materials of excitement in the state 
of society itself ? Do you think that Daniel O'Connell has 



SPEECH AT THE CLAEE ELECTION. 293 

himself, and by the single powers of his own mind, unaided 
by any external co-operation, brought the country to this 
great crisis of agitation ? Mr. O'Oonnell, with all his talents 
for excitation, would have been utterly powerless and incapa- 
ble, unless he had been allied with a great conspirator against 
the public peace : and I will tell you who that confederate is— 
it is the law of the land itself that has been Mr. O'Connell's 
main associate, and that ought to be denounced as the mighty 
agitator of Ireland. The rod of oppression is the wand of 
this enchanter, and the book of his spells is the penal code. 
Break the wand of this pohtical Prospero, and take from him 
the volume of his magic, and he wiU evoke the spirits which 
are now under his control no longer. But why should I have 
recourse to illustration which may be accounted fantastical, in 
order to elucidate what is in itself so plain and obvious ? 
Protestant gentlemen, who do me the honor to listen to me, 
look, I pray you, a little dispassionately at the real cau.ses of 
the events which have taken place amongst you. I beg of you 
to put aside your angry feelings for an instant, and beheve me 
that I am far from thinking that you have no good ground for 
resentment. 

It must be most painful to the proprietors of this county to 
be stripped in an instant of all their influenee ; to be left des- 
titute of all sort of sway over their dependents, and to see a 
few demagogues and priests usurping their national authority. 
This feehng of resentment must be aggravated by the con- 
sciousness that they have not deserved such a return from their 
tenants : and as I know Sir Edwarfl O'Brien to be a truly 
benevolent landlord, I can well conceive that the apparent in- 
gratitude with which he was treated, has added to the pain 
which every landlord must experience ; and I own that I was 
not surprised to see tears upon his eyelids, while his face was 
inflamed with the emotions to which it was not in human na- 
ture that he should not give way. But let Sir Edward O'Brien, 
and his fellow-proprietors who are gathered about him, recol- 
lect that the facility and promptitude Avith which the peasantry 
have thrown off their allegiance, are owing not so much to 
any want of just moral feehng on the part of the people, as to 
the operation of causes for which the people are not to blame. 



294 SELECT SPEECHES OF EICHAED LALOR SHEIL. 

In no other country, except in this, would such a revolution 
have been effected. Wherefore ? Because in no other country 
are the people divided by the law from their superiors, and 
cast into the hands of a set of men, who are supphed with 
the means of national excitement by the system of govern- 
ment under which we live. 

Surely no man can beheve that such an anomalous body 
as the Catholic Association could exist, excepting in a com- 
munity which had been alienated from the state by the state 
itself. The discontent and the resentment of seven millions 
of the population _ have generated that domestic government, 
which sways public opinion, and uses the national passions as 
the instruments of its will. It would be utterly impossible, if 
there were no exasperating distinctions amongst us, to create 
any artificial causes of discontent. Let men declaim for a 
century, and if they have no real grievance their harangues 
will be empty sound and idle air. But when what they teU 
the people is true — ^when they are sustained by substantial 
facts, effects are produced, of which what has taken place at 
this election is only an example. The whole body of the peo- 
ple having been previously excited, the moment any incident, 
such as this election, occurs, all the popular passions start 
simultaneously up, and bear down every obstacle before them. 
Do not, therefore, be surprised that the peasantry should 
throw off their allegiance when they are under the operation 
of emotions which it would be wonderful if they could resist. 
The feehng b}^ which they are actuated, would make them not 
only vote against their landlord, but would make them scale 
the batteries of a fortress, and mount the breach ; and, gentle- 
men, give me leave to ask you, whether, after a due reflec- 
tion upon the motives by which your vassals (for so they are 
accomited) are governed, you will be disposed to exercise any 
measures of severity in their regard. 

I hear it said, that before many days go by, there will be 
many tears shed in the hovels of your slaves, and that you 
will take a terrible vengeance. I trust that you will not, when 
yonr own passions shall have subsided, and your blood has 
had time to cool, persevere in such a cruel, and let me add, 
such an unjustifiable determination. Consider whether a great 



SPEECH AT THE CLARE ELECTION. 295 

allowance sliould not be made for the offence whicli they have 
committed. If they are under the influence of fanaticism, 
such an influence affords many circumstances of extenuation : 
— you should forgive them, "for they know not what they do." 
They have followed their priests to the hustings, and they 
would follow them to the scaffold. You will ask, wherefore 
they should prefer their priests to their landlords, and have 
a higher reverence for the altars of their religion, than for 
the counter in which you calculate your rents ? Consider a 
little the relation in which the priest stands towards the pea- 
sant. I will take for my example an excellent landlord and an 
excellent priest. The landlord shall be Sir Edward O'Brien, 
and the priest shall -be Mr. Murphy, of Corofin. Who is Sir 
Edward O'Brien ? A gentleman who, from the windows of 
a palace, looks upon possessions almost as wide as those 
which his ancestors beheld from the summit of their feudal 
towers. His tenants pay him their rent twice a year, and have 
their land at a moderate rate. But what are his claims, when 
put into comparison with those of Mr. Murphy, of Corofin, 
to the confidence, to the affection, and to the fidelity of the 
peasants who are committed to his care ? He is not only the 
minister of that humble altar at which their forefathers and 
themselves were taught to kneel, but he is their kind, their 
familiar, yet most respected friend. In their difficulties and 
distresses they have no one else to look to ; he never fails, when 
consulted by them, to associate his symjpathy with his admo- 
nition ; for their sake he is ready to encounter every hazard, 
and, in the performance of the perilous duties incident to his 
sacerdotal office, he never hesitates to expose his life. In a 
stormy night, a knocking is heard at the door of the priest of 
Corofin. He is told that at the foot of the mountain a man of 
guilt and blood has scarcely more than an hour to live. 

Will the teacher of the gospel tarry because of the rain and 
of the wind, and wait until the day shall break, when the soul 
of an expiring sinner can be saved, and the demons that are 
impatient for him can stiU be scared away ? He goes forth in 
the blackness of the tempestuous midnight— he ascends the 
hill, he traverses the morass — and faint, and cold, and dripping, 
finds his way to the hovel where his coming is awaited ; — ^with 



296 SELECT SPEECHES OF KICHAKD lALOR SHEIL. 

what a gasping of inarticulate gratitude — with what a smile of 
agony is he welcomed ! No fear of contagion, no dread of 
the exhalations of mortality, reeking from the bed of the pes- 
tilential man, can appall him, but, ImeeHng down at the side of 
the departing culprit, and sustaining him in his arms, he re- 
ceives from lips, imjiregnated with death, the whisper with 
which the heart is unloaded of its mysteries, and, raising up 
his eyes to heaven, pronounces the ritual of absolution in the 
name of Him of whose commission of mercy he is the befit- 
ting bearer, and whose jDrecepts he illustrates in his life and 
inculcates in his example. And can you feel wonder and re- 
sentment that under the influence of such a man as I have 
described to you, your dependents should have ventured upon 
a violation of your mandates ? Forgive me if I venture to 
supphcate, on behalf of your tenants, for forbearance. Par- 
don them, in the name of one who will forgive you your of- 
fences in the same measure of compassion which you will 
show to the trespasses of those who have sinned against your- 
selves. Do not persecute these poor people : don't thi'ow 
their children upon the public road, and send them forth to 
starve, to shiver, and to die. For God's sake, Mr. Fitzgerald, 
as you are a gentleman and a man of honor, interpose your 
influence with your friends, and redeem your pledge. I ad- 
dress myself personally to you. On the first day of the elec- 
tion you declared that you would deprecate persecution, and 
that you were the last to wish that vindictive measures should 
be employed. I beheve you — and I call upon you to redeem 
that pledge of mercy, to perform that great moral promise. 
You will cover yourself with honor by so doing, in the same 
way that you will share in the ignominy that will attend upon 
any expedients of rigor. Before you leave this country to as- 
sume your high functions, enjoin your friends with that elo- 
quence of which you are the master, to refrain from cruelty 
and not to oppress their tenants. TeU them, sir, that instead 
of busying themselves in the worthless occupation of revenge, 
it is much fitter that they should take the pohtical condition 
of their country into their deep consideration. Tell them that 
they should address themselves to the legislature, and implore 
a remedy for these frightful evils. Tell them to call upon the 



SPEECH ON THE IRISH MUNICIPAL BILL. 297 

men, in whose hands the destiny of this great empire is placed 
to adopt a system of peace, and to apply to Ireland the great 
canon of political morality — pads imponere morem. Let it 
not be imagined that any measure of disfranchisement, that 
any additional penalty, will afford a remedy. Things have 
been permitted to advance to a height from which they cannot 
recede. Protestants, awake to a sense of your condition. 
What have you seen during this election ? Enough to make 
you feel that it is not a mere local excitation, but that 
seven millions of Irish people are completely arrayed and or- 
ganized. That which you behold in Clare, you would behold, 
under similar circumstances, in every county in the kingdom. 
Did you mark our discipline, our subordination, our good 
order, and that tranquillity, which is formidable indeed ? You 
have seen sixty thousand men under our command, and not a 
hand was raised^ and not a forbidden word was uttered in that 
amazing multitude. You have beheld an example of our 
power in the almost miraculous sobriety of the people. Their 
lips have not touched that infuriating beverage to which they 
are so much attached, and their habitual propensity vanished 
at our command. Is it meet and wise to leave us armed with 
such a dominion ? Trust us not with it ; strip us of its appall- 
ing power ; disarray us by equality ; instead of angry slaves 
make us contented citizens ; if you do not, tremble for the result. 



SPEECH ON THE lEISH MUNICIPAL BILL. 

IN THE HOUSE OE COMMONS, FEBRUARY 22, 1837. 



The right honorable baronet (Sir James Graham) began the 
speech, in many particulars remarkable, which he has just 
concluded amidst the applause of those whose approbation, 
at one period of his political life, he would have blushed to 
incur — by intimating that he was regarded as a "bigot" on 
this side of the house. Whether he deserved the appellation 
by which he has informed us .that he is designated, his speech 



298 SELECT SPEECHES OF KICHAKD LALOR SHEIL. 

to-night affords some means of determining. I will not call 
him a bigot — I am not disposed to use an expression in any 
degree offensive to the right honorable baronet, but I will 
presume to call him a convert, who exhibits all the zeal for 
which conversion is proverbially conspicuous. Of that zeal 
we have manifestations in his references to pamphlets about 
Spain, in his allusions to the mother of Cabrera, in his remarks 
on the Spanish clergy, and the practice of confession in the 
Catholic Church. I own that when he takes in such bad 
part the strong expressions employed in reference to the Irish 
Church, (expressions employed by Protestants, and not by Ro- 
man Catholics,) I am surprised that he should not himself ab- 
stain from observations offensive to the religious feelings of 
Roman Catholic members of this house. The right honorable 
baronet has done me the honor to produce an extract from a 
speech of mine, delivered nearly two years ago at the Coburg 
Gardens ; and at the same time expressed himself in terms of 
praise of the humble individual who now addresses you. I 
can assure the right honorable baronet that I feel at least as 
much pleasure in listening to him, as he has the goodness to 
say that he derives from hearing me. He has many of the 
accomplishments attributed by Milton to a distinguished 
speaker in a celebrated council. He is " in act most graceful 
and humane — his tongue drops manna." I cannot but feel 
pride that he should entertain so high an opinion of me, as to 
induce him to peruse and collect all that I say even beyond 
these walls. He has spent the recess, it appears, in the dili- 
gent selection of such passages as he has read to-night, and 
which I little thought, when they were uttered, that the right 
honorable baronet would think worthy of his comments. How- 
ever, he owes me the return of an obhgation. The last time I 
spoke in this house, I referred to a celebrated speech of his at 
Cockermouth, in which he pronounced an eloquent invective 
against " a recreant Whig ;" and as he found that I was a 
diligent student of those models of eloquence which the right 
honorable baronet used formerly to supply, in advocating the 
popular rights, he thought himself bound, I suppose, to repay 
me by the citation, which has, I beheve, produced less effect 
than he had anticipated. 



SPEECH ON THE lEISH MUNICIPAL BILL 299 

The right honorable baronet also adverted to what he calls 
"the Lichfield House compact." It is not worth while to go 
over the same ground, after I have already proved, by reading 
in the House the speech which has been the subject of so much 
remark — how much I have been misrepresented ; I never said 
that there was a " compact ;" I did say, and I repeat it, that 
there was " a compact alliance." Was that the first occasion 
on which an alUance was entered into ? Was Lichfield House 
the only spot ever dedicated to pohtical reconciliations ? Has 
the right honorable baronet forgotten, or has the noble lord 
(Stanley) who sits beside him, succeeded in dismissing from 
his recollection, a meeting at Brookes's Club at which the Lish 
. and Enghsh reformers assembled, and, in the emergency 
which had taken place, agreed to rehnquish thek differences 
and make a united stand against the common foe ? Does the 
noble lord forget an admirable speech (it was the best post- 
prandial oration it was ever my good fortune to have heard) 
dehvered by a right honorable gentleman who was not then a 
noble lord, and was accompanied by a vehemence of gesture 
and a force of intonation not a little illustrative of the emotions 
of the orator, on his anticipated ejectment from office ? That 
eloquent individual, whom I now see on the Tory side of the 
House, got up on a table, and with vehement and almost ap- 
palling gesture, pronounced an invective against the Duke of 
Wellington, to which, in the records of vituperation, few par- 
allels can be found. I shall not repeat what the noble lord 
then said. 

LoED Stanley. — ^Tou may. 

Mk. Sheil. — No ; my object is not to excite personal ani- 
mosities among new, but ardent friends. I have no malevo- 
lent motive in adverting to that remarkable occasion. If I 
have at all referred to it, it is because the right honorable 
baronet has been sufficiently indiscreet to talk of Lichfield 
House : — let him, for the future, confine himself to the recol- 
lections of Brookes's, instead of selecting as the subject of his 
sarcasms the meeting in which that reconciliation took place 
to which Ireland is indebted for the exclusion of the noble 
lord opposite, and his associates, from power. The right hon- 
orable baronet has been guHty of another imprudence : he has 



300 SELECT SPEECHES OF RICHAKD LALOR SHEIL. 

cliarged Lord Mulgrave with the promotion of Mr. Pigot to a 
forensic office in DubHn Castle. Mr. Pigot's offence, it seems, 
consists in his having been a member of the Precursor Asso- 
ciation. Does the right honorable baronet recollect where he 
sits in this house — with whom he is co-operating — with what 
party he and the noble lord opposite have entered into con- 
federacy — when he makes matters of this kind the ground- 
work of imputation? Who were the first men selected for 
promotion by the Tories ? To what association did they be- 
long ? Let the right honorable baronet look back, and behind 
him he will see the treasurer, the grand treasurer, of the 
Orange Association, whom the member for Tamworth ap- 
pointed Treasurer of the Ordnance — when his sovereign 
placed him at the head of the government of his country. 
What are the offences of the National Association, when com- 
pared with the proceedings of the Orange Listitution ? Are 
our proceedings clandestine ? Are figures and symbols re- 
sorted to by us ? Have we tampered with the army, as the 
Orange Society has been convicted by a committee of this 
House of having done ? 

Colonel Perceval. — I deny that the Orange Society tam- 
pered with the army. I admit that such warrants were issued. 

Mr. Sheil. — I will not dispute with the gallant colonel 
about a word. If the phrase " tampered " be objected to, I 
will adopt any word the gallant colonel will do me the favor 
to suggest, in order to express a notorious and indisputable 
fact. It was proved beyond all doubt, and even beyond all 
controversy, that the Orange Society made the utmost efforts 
to extend itseh into the army ; that a number of regimental 
warrants were issued, and that resolutions were actually 
passed, at meetings of the society, upon the subject. From 
this society, the gallant officer, who was one of its functiona- 
ries, was selected, in order to place him in the Ordnance ; and 
a curious coincidence, having been treasurer to the Orange 
Institution, he was appointed to the same fiscal office in the 
Ordnance, to whose treasureship he was raised. How, then, 
can gentlemen be guilty of the imprudence of talking of Mr. 
Pigot's appointment — (he is a gentleman conspicuous for his 
talents and high personal character) — when their own party 



SPEECH ON THE IRISH MUNICIPAL BILL. 30l 

made, witliin a period so recent, such an appointment as tliat 
to wiiicli I have reluctantly but unavoidably adverted. 

But, sir, can we not discuss the great measure of municipal 
reform without descending to such small and transitory con- 
siderations as the selection of this or that man for office? 
Talk of Lord Mulgrave's government as you will, you cannot 
deny that his administration has been, beyond all example, 
successful. He has acted on the wise and obvious policy of 
adapting the spirit of his government to the feeliags of the 
numerous majority of that Irish nation by whom he is re- 
spected and beloved. His measures have been founded on 
the determination to regard the rights of the many, instead of 
consulting the factious interests of the few ; and, by the just 
and wise system on which he has acted, he has effected a 
complete reconciliation between the government and the peo- 
ple. You speak of his liberating prisoners from jails. I dis- 
dain even to advert, in reply, to the comments which have 
been made on this act of clemency by men who are naturally 
the advocates of incarceration. I meet these gentlemen with 
the broad fact, that the country has, under Lord Mulgrave's 
government, made a great progress towards that pacification 
which I make no doubt that, under his auspices, L^eland will 
attain. 

Look to the county which I have the honor to represent, 
and which has been unhappily conspicuous for the disturbances 
of which it was once the scene. Mr. Howley, the assistant- 
barrister for that county — a gentleman whose authority is un- 
impeachable, and who, by his impartial conduct, his admirable 
temper, his knowledge, and his talents, has won the applause 
of all parties — states, in his charge dehvered at Nenagh, that 
there is an end to the savage combats at fairs ; and, in a re- 
turn made by the clerk of the Crown for the county, it appears 
that, in every class of crime, there has been, within the last 
year, a most extraordinary diminution. This surely is better 
evidence than the assertions made in Tory journals, and 
adopted by gentlemen whose political interests are at variance 
with their amiable aspirations for the establishment of order 
in their country. But, sir, the most remarkable incident to 
the administration of my Lord Mulgrave has been, its effect 



302 SELECT SPEECHES OF RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 

upon the great political question which, not very long ago, 
produced so much excitement in one country, and not a little 
apprehension in the other. 

Without having recourse to coercive bills — -without resort- 
ing to a single measure of severity — by impressing the people 
of Ireland with a conviction that he was determined to do 
them justice. Lord Mulgrave has laid the Repeal question at 
rest. It is, if not dead, at least deeply dormant ; and although 
such a pohcy as that of the noble lord opposite would soon 
awaken or resuscitate it again, as long as the principles on 
which the government of Lord Mulgrave and of the noble 
lord the member for Yorkshire, Lord Morpeth, is carried on, 
are adhered to, so long you will find that the people of Ireland 
will remain in a relation not only of amity, but of attachment 
to the administration. It may be asked, how the good results 
of the policy I have been describing can affect the question 
before the House ? Thus : the executive has, by its judicious 
measures, by adapting itself to the political condition of the 
country, and by its preference of the nation to a faction, com- 
pletely succeeded. It has held out a model which the legis- 
lature ought to imitate. Let the parliament enact laws in the 
spirit in which the laws, even as they stand, have been carried 
into effect in Ireland. Let the good of the country, instead 
of the monopoly of a party, supply the standard by which 
parliament shall regulate its legislation ; and to what the Irish 
government has so nobly commenced, a perfect and glorious 
completion will one day be given. 

I turn from the consideration of those topics connected with 
the existing condition of affairs in Ireland, to the discussion of 
the broader groimd on which the question ought to be debated. 
I ask you to do justice to Ireland. Every man in this house 
will probably say, that he is anxious to do Ireland justice ; 
but Avhat is justice to Ireland ? It will assist us, in investi- 
gating that question, to determine, in the first place, what is 
justice to England? In this countr}'- the Corporation and 
Test Acts were always regarded as the muniments of the 
church ; and corporations, through their effects, as its chief 
bulwarks. Mr. Canning was so strongly persuaded of this, 
that in 1827, while he declared himself the advocate of eman- 



SPEECH ON THE lEISH MUNICIPAL BILL. 303 

cipation, lie announced liis firm resolve to stand by tlie Pro- 
testant corporations, and not to consent to the repeal of the 
law which gave them their peculiar character, and connected 
them with the establishment. Those laws were, however, re- 
pealed by the member for Tamworth ; he could not help re- 
pealing them ; he then began to undergo that process of soft 
compulsion, in submitting to which he afterwards acquired 
those habits of useful complaisance — ^in which we shall furnish 
him with the strongest motives to persevere. 

The Test and Corporation Acts having been repealed, still, 
through the machinery of self-election, the body of the people 
were deprived of the practical advantages which ought to have 
resulted from that repeal. The reformed House of Commons 
determined to place corporations under popular control. The 
Lords thought it imprudent to resist. No one was found bold 
enough to state that because a transfer of power would take 
place from the Tories to the Reformers, therefore corporations 
should be abolished. Take Liverpool as an example. A trans- 
fer of influence has taken place there, to such an extent that, 
very much to the noble lord's astonishment, his plan for the 
mutilation of the Word of God has been adopted in the 
schools under the superintendence of the corporations. Let 
us now pass to Ireland. I will admit, for the sake of argument, 
that corporations were established to protect the Protestant 
Church ; they would thus rest on the same ground as the Test 
and Corporation Acts : the latter having been abandoned in 
England, and having been followed by corporate reform, the 
same reasons apply to the relinquishment of the principle of 
exclusion in Ireland, which is utterly incompatible with the 
ground on which Catholic Emancipation was acknowledged to 
have been conceded. What took place when Emancipation 
was carried ? Was it intimated that we should be excluded 
from corporations ? The direct contrary was asserted. " Ro- 
man Cathohcs (said the right honorable member for Tam- 
worth, in the admirable speech in which he acknowledged the 
gentle violence by which the rights of Ireland were ravished 
from his reluctant coyness) Roman Catholics shall be admitted 
to all corporate offices in Ireland." This was strong ; but he 
did more. In the bill framed under his superintendence, two 



304 SELECT SPEECHES OF RICHARD L.YLOR SHEIL. 

clauses were introduced providing for the admission of Catho- 
lics into corporations. Was the right honorable gentleman 
sincere ? Did he intend that to the Jieart of Ireland, beating 
as it was with hope, the word of promise should be kept ? 
Who can doubt it? Who can believe that the right honorable 
baronet would be capable of practising a delusion ? What he 
did, he did unwilliuglj ; but he did Avith honesty whatever he 
did. His act of enfranchisement was baffled in this regard, 
and, by a combination among corporators, Catholics were ex- 
cluded. From that day to this, not a single Roman Catholic 
— ^not one — has been admitted into the corporations attached 
to the metropolis of our country. 

I boldly ask the right honorable baronet whether he ap- 
proves of this exclusion, and of the means by which it was 
effected ? Was it not a fraud upon the law, by which, clearly 
and imequivocally, admission into corporations was secured to 
us ? If it was intended that we should not have the benefit of 
Catholic Emancipation in this particular, it ought, in common 
candor, to have been told us ; but to pass an act making us 
admissible — to allow seven years to pass, and permit the law 
to be frustrated in that interval — and then when a measure is 
brought forward in order to give us the advantage of that law, 
to destroy corporations lest we should be admitted — ^is not con- 
sistent with English fairness, with that honest deahng for 
which you are conspicuous, nor, let me add, with the personal 
character of the right honorable baronet. Ay, but the church 
may be injured. Why did you not think of that when eman- 
cipation was being carried? Why make your argument in 
favor of the church posterior to your legislation against it? 
I call on the right honorable baronet, not only in the name of 
justice to us, but in the name of his own dignity, as he would 
preserve that amity with himself which results from the con- 
sciousness of honest and noble dealing — I call on him to aban- 
don his party, in adherence to his pledge ; and if, between 
his politics and his integrity, he must make a choice, I know 
that he will not hesitate, for a moment, in making his election. 

He fears an injury to the church. This church, by which a 
single object contemplated in a national establishment has 
never yet been attained — this church of yours is made the 



SPEECH ON THE lEISH MUNICIP.\Ii BILL. 305 

burden of eveiy speecli by wMcli the cause of Toryism is 
sought to be maintained ; and to every project for the im- 
provement of the country, and the assertion of the people's 
rightSf is presented as an insuperable obstacle. When we call 
on you to abohsh the fatal impost which keeps the country in 
a paroxysm of excitement, you cry out, " the Church !" When 
we bid you rescue the country from the frightful htigation 
which turns our courts of justice into an arena for the combat 
of the pohtical passions, you cry out, " the Church !" And 
when we implore you to fulfill your contract at the Union, to 
redeem your pledge, given with Emancipation, to extend to us 
British privileges, and grant us British institutions, you cry 
out, " the Church !" The two countries must have the same 
church, and for that purpose, the two countries must hot have 
the same corporations ! They are incompatible ; we must 
then elect between them ; which shall we prefer — the church 
of one miUion, or the corporation of seven. What an argu- 
ment do the auxiUaries of the Establishment advance, when 
they admit that the sacrifice of the national rights is necessary 
for its sustainment. But if this position be founded, where- 
fore was parliamentary reform ever conceded to us ? Are we 
quahfied to elect members of the House of Commons, but unfit 
to elect members of the Common Council ? Are we unworthy 
of being the managers of our own local concerns — while here, 
in this great Imperial assembly, with the legislators of the 
British empire, with the arbiters of the destiny of the noblest 
nation in the world, we stand on a lofty level. Never was 
there any inconsistency comparable to this ! I have a right 
to rise up here, and to demand justice for my country, as rep- 
resentative of the second county in Ireland ; and I am unwor- 
thy of being a corporator of Cashel or of Clonmel. I may be 
told that the Tories resisted the extension of parliamentary re- 
form to Ireland, and on the very grounds on which they oj)- 
pose the apphcation of corporate reform. I must acknow- 
ledge it : they did insist that the close boroughs of Ireland 
were intended as the bulwarks of the Protestant interest ; 
they did contend that a Cathohc ascendency would be the re- 
sult of a parhamentary reform ; and they urged with great 
zeal and strenuousness, that the demohtion of the Established 
Church would be its inevitable consequence. In what a burst 



306 SELECT SPEECHES OF EICHAKD L.\XOR SHEIL. 

of lofty eloquence did the noble lord, who now sits opposite, 
refute them ! " What !" he exclaimed, " deny to Ireland the 
benefits of the reform you give to England — withhold from 
Lcland the advantages which, at the Union, you pledged 
yourselves to grant her ! deny her a community in your privi- 
leges, and an equal participation in your rights ! Then you 
may repeal the Union at once, for you will render it a degrad- 
ing and dishonorable compact." But I do injustice to that 
admirable passage ; and as the noble lord may have forgotten 
it, as his recollections may be as evanescent as his opinions, I 
think it better to read what, from memory, I have imperfectly 
referred to. The passage will be found in the 17th volume of 
the Mu-ror of Parhament, page 2288. He begins with a pane- 
gyric on the Irish members. We were agitators then, just as 
much as we now are ; we held and professed exactly the same 
opinions ; we had an association at full work, just as we now 
have ; but the noble lord did not, at that time, think it judi- 
cious to appeal to passages to which he has since addressed 
liimseK. The passage runs thus : 

"We have been told that the English bill does not in any case apply- 
to Ireland, and that the circumstances of the two countries are different : 
but I am sure that honorable gentlemen will find that the principle of 
reform is the same, whether it is aj^pUed to England or Ireland ; and if 
it be just here, so it must be there. I would entreat those who 
advocate the Conservative interest, and who consider themselves the 
supporters of Protestant institutions, to look to the danger to which 
these institutions will be exposed in Ireland by withholding the privileges 
Avhich this bill is to confer. If they wish to give Ireland a real, soUd, 
substantial grievance — if they wish to give some handle to excitement, 
and to pi'esent a soHd argument for the repeal of the Union — they need 
only show that, in the British House of Commons, English interests are 
treated in one way, and Irish interests in another, that in England the 
government rule by free reiaresentation, and by the voice of the people 
— while in Ireland that voice is stifled, and the people are shut out from 
a fair share in the choice of their representatives. I fear that, if we do 
not concede in a spirit of fairness and justice, agitation will break out 
in a manner which it has never done before. I cannot conceive anything 
more clear than that the present measure is only the extension of the 
principle of the English bill to Ii-eland. I cannot conceive uj)on what 
principle we can refuse to place both countries on an equality, and make 
the same principle applicable to the election of all members of the united 
legislature of the British empire. " 



SPEECH ON THE IRISH MUNICIPAL BILL. 307 

The House has heard this passage with surprise ; and al- 
though every sentence that I have read has produced a sensa- 
tion, there is not, in the entire, a sentiment which has called 
forth more astonishment than the reference made to the repeal 
of the Union, as a result of the denial of equal privileges to the 
English and to the Irish people. And here let me turn to the 
right honorable member for Cumberland, and ask him, what 
he now thinks of his expostulation with the Irish Attorney- 
General, on his assertion that injustice would furnish an ar- 
gument for repeal ? Did not his noble friend, when in office, 
when Secretary for Ireland, solemnly assert the same thing ? 
I will read the passage again : " If they wish to give Ireland a 
real, solid, substantial grievance — if they wish to give some 
handle to excitement, and to present a solid argument for the 
repeal of the Union — they need only show that, in the British 
House of Commons, English interests are treated in one way, 
and Irish interests in another." This is nobly expressed ; but, 
in the midst of our admiration of such fine sentiments, founded 
on such lofty principles, and conveyed in language at once so 
beautiful and perspicuous, what melancholy feeling, what 
mournful reflections arise ! Alas ! that the man who uttered 
what I nave just read, who was capable of feeling and of ex- 
pressing himself thus, in whom such a union of wisdom and 
eloquence was then exhibited— alas ! that he should now be 
separated from his old associates, and that, united to his for- 
mer antagonists, he should not only act on principles diamet- 
rically the reverse, but denounce his colleagues, and enter with 
the men whom he formerly represented as the worst enemies 
of his country into a derogatory league. But, not contented with 
joining them, in the transports of his enthusiasm he has gone 
beyond them ; and on the first night of this debate, taking up 
the part of a prophet, when he had ceased to perform that of 
a statesman, he told the people of Ireland, in a burst of in- 
temperate prediction, that never — ^no, never — should the mu- 
nicipal privileges, granted to the people of England, be ex- 
tended to them. 

Lord Stanley. — I never said so. 

Me. Sheil. — Then the noble lord has been grievously mis- 
represented. I acknowledge that I was not present when he 



308 SELECT SPEECHES OF RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 

spoke, but I was told by several persons that he had stated 
that tills measure never should be carried. 

Lord Stanley. — I did not state that the measure never 
should be carried. I did state that the people of England 
would not yield to alarm and intimidation, and that the advo- 
cates of this measure were taking the worst means to effect 
tlieh object. The honorable and learned gentleman confesses 
that he was not present when I spoke, and he should therefore 
be cautious in attributing to me the opinions which he has as- 
cribed to me, in this attack which he has been making, know- 
ing, as he does, that it is out of my power to reply. 

Mr. Sheil. — When the noble lord denies the use of certain 
expressions, and disclaims the sentiment conveyed by them, I 
at once accede to his interpretation of what he said, or rather 
meant to say. The noble lord observes that I am making an 
attack on him, knowing that he has no reply. The noble lord 
is well aware, from experience, that whether he has a right to 
reply or not, I never have the least dread of him, and that on 
no occasion in this house, have I ever, in the performance of 
my duty to my country, shrunk from an encounter with him. 
He calls my speech an attack on him. I am not pronounc- 
ing a personal invective against the noble lord. I am not ex- 
ceeding the limits of fair discussion, or violating either the or- 
dinances of good breeding or the rules of. this house. I am 
exhibiting the inconsistencies and incongruities of the noble 
lord, and stripping his opinions of any value which they may 
possess, by proving him, at a period not remote, to have acted 
on, and to have enforced, principles directly opposite to those 
of which he is now the intolerant advocate. This is the ex- 
tent of my attack on him. He Avill, however, pardon me for 
suggesting to him, that, if I did assail him with far more ac- 
rimony than I am disposed to do, he is the last man in this 
house who ought to complain. "Who is there that shows less 
mercy to a political adversary ? Who is so relentless in the 
infliction of his sarcasms, even on his old friends and asso- 
ciates ? However, I ought not to feel much surprise that he 
should be so sensitive as he shows himself to be : no man fears 
an operation so much as a surgeon, and the drummer of a 
regiment trembles at the lash. 



SPEECH ON THE lEISH MUNICIPAL BILL. 309 

But tlie noble lord mistakes : it is not any attack from me 
which he has cause to apprehend ; — he bears that within his 
own bosom which reproaches him far more than I do. But, 
from his emotions, from his resentments, and from his con- 
sciousness, let us turn to something more deserving of regard, 
and consider how far it is probable that this measure can be 
successfully resisted. J wish to avoid all minacious intima- 
tions, and, therefore, I wiU not say that it must and shall be 
carried ; but, adopting the calmer tone of deliberation, I en- 
treat the noble lord opposite, and the House, to consider what 
the probabilities are which are connected with this question, 
and whether it is likely that the demand made by Ireland for 
justice can be long treated by any branch of the legislature 
with disregard. 

I assert that Ireland, sustained as she is by the sympathies 
of a very large portion of the people of this country, must pre- 
vail in the cause in which her feelings are so deeply engaged, 
and on whose prosecution she is firmly and unalterably deter- 
mined. I undertake to prove this proposition, and it wiU cer- 
tainly be felt to be most important to consider whether it be 
just ; for if men are once persuaded that this measure must 
ultimately bs carried, they will feel that it is better to do, at 
once, what must be done at last, and that discussion ought to 
cease where necessity has begun to operate. I put the case of 
Ireland thus : if the Cathohc miUions, by their union, by 
their organization, by their associated power, carried their 
emancipation, what is the Kkehhood of their success in the 
pursuit of their present objects ? If we forced the right hon- 
orable member for Tamworth to yield to us (a man not only 
of great eloquence in debate, but of great discretion, of 
great influence, free from ebullitions of intemperance, and 
whose personal character entitles him to the confidence of his 
party), shall we not. now overcome any obstacles which the 
noble lord may present to our progress ? Let him remember 
that our power is more than trebled, and if, contending with 
such disadvantages as we had to struggle with, we prevailed, 
— where are the impediments by which our career in the pur- 
suit of what remains to be achieved for the honor of our 
country, shall be even long retarded ? It behoves the noble 



310 SELECT SPEECHES OF RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 

lord to look attentively at Ireland. Wherever we turn our 
eyes, we see the national poAver dilating, expanding, and as- 
cending : — never did a liberated nation spring on in the career 
that freedom throws open towards improvement with such a 
bound as we have — in wealth, in intelligence, in high feeling, 
in all the great constituents of a state, we have made in a few 
years an astonishing progress. 

The character of our country is completely changed : we are 
fi-ee, and we feel as if we never had been slaves. Ireland 
stands as erect as if she had never stooped ; although she 
once bowed her forehead to the earth, every mark and trace 
of her prostration have been effaced. But these are generah- 
ties — these are vague and abstract vauntings, without detail. 
Well — if you stand in need of specification, it shall be rapidly, 
but not inconclusively, given. But hold : I was going to point 
to the first law offices in the country, filled by Boman Catho- 
lics — I was going to point to the second judicial office in Ire- 
land filled by a Boman Cathohc — I was going to point to the 
crowds of Boman Catholics who, in every profession and walk 
of life, are winning their way to eminence in the walks that 
lead to affluence or to honor. But one single fact suffices for 
my purpose : emancipation was followed by reform, and reform 
has thrown sixty men, devoted to the interests of Ireland, into 
the House of Commons. If the Clare election was a great 
incident — if the Clare election afforded evidence that emanci- 
pation could not be resisted — look at sixty of us (what are 
Longford and Carlow but a realization of the splendid intima- 
tions that Clare held out ?) — look, I say, at sixty of us — the 
majority, the great majority of the representatives of Ireland — • 
leagued and confederated by an obligation and a pledge as 
sacred as any with which men, associated for the interests of 
their country, were ever bound together. Thank God, we are 
here ! 

I remember the time when the body to which I belong were 
excluded from all participation in the great legislative rights 
of which we are now in the possession. I remember to have 
felt humiliated at the tone in which I heard the cause of Ire- 
land pleaded, when I was occasionally admitted under the gal- 
lery of the House of Commons. I felt pain at hearing us 



SPEECH ON THE lEISH MUNICIPAL BILL. 31 1 

represented as humble suppliants for liberty, and as asking 
freedom as if it were alms that we were soliciting. Perhaps 
that tone was unavoidable : thank God, it is no longer neces- 
sary or appropriate. Here we are, in all regards your equals, 
and demanding our rights as the representatives of Britons 
would demand their own. We have less eloquence, less skill, 
less astuteness than the great men to whom, of old, the inte- 
rests of Ireland were confided ; but we igaake up for these 
imperfections by the moral port and national bearing that be- 
come us. In mastery of diction we may be defective ; in 
resource of argument we may be wanting ; we may not be 
gifted with the accomphshments by which persuasion is pro- 
duced ; but in energy, in strenuousness, in union, in fidehty to 
our country and to each other, and above ah, in the undaunt- 
ed and dauntless determination to enforce equality for Ireland, 
we stand unsurpassed. This, then, is the power with which 
the noble lord courts an encounter, foretells his own victories, 
and triumphs in their anticipation in the House of Commons. 
Where are his means of discomfiting us ? To what resources 
does he look for the accomplishment of the wonders which he 
is to perform ? Does he rely upon the excitement of the reli- 
gious and national prejudices of England ; and does he find it 
in his heart to resort to the "no Popery" cry? Instead of 
telHug him what he is doing, I'll tell the country what, thirty 
years ago, was done. 

In I8OY, the Whigs were in possession of Downing Street, 
and the Tories were in possession of St. James's Palace ; but, 
without the people, the possession of St. James's was of no 
avail. The Whigs proposed that Eoman Catholics should be 
admitted to the higher grades in the army and navy. The 
Tories saw that their opportunity was come, and the " no 
Popery" cry was raised. There existed, at that time, a great 
mass of prejudice in England. You had conquered Ireland 
and enslaved her ; you hated her for the wrongs that you had 
done her, and despised her, and perhaps justly, for her endu- 
rance : the victim of oppression naturally becomes the object 
of scorn : you loathed our country, and you abhorred our 
creed. Of this feeling, the Tories took advantage ; the tocsin 
of fanaticism was rung ; the war-whoop of religious discord, 



312 SELECT SPEECHES OP EICHARD L.VLOR SHEIL. 

the savage yell of infuriated ignorance, resounded tlirough the 
country. Events that ought to have been allowed to remain 
buried in the obli\'ion of centuries, were disinterred ; every 
misdeed of Catholics, when Catholics and Protestants imbrued 
their hands alternately in blood, was recalled — the ashes of 
the Smithfield fires were stirred, for sparks with which the 
popular passions might be ignited. 

The re-establishment of Popery — the downfall of every Pro- 
testant institution — the annihilation of all liberty, civil or reli- 
gious, these were the topics with which crafty men, without 
remorse of conscience, worked on the popular delusion. At 
public assemblies, senators, more remarkable for Protestant 
piety than Christian charity, delivered themselves of ferocious 
eifusions amidst credulous and enthusiastic multitudes — then 
came public abuses, at which libations to the worst passions 
of human nature were prodigally poured out. " Rally round 
the King, rally round the church, rally round the religion of 
your forefathers"^-these were the invocations with which the 
Enghsh people were wrought into frenzy ; and ha"\dng, by 
these expedients, driven their antagonists from office, the To- 
ries passed, themselves, the very measure for which they made 
their competitors the objects of their denunciation. Are you 
playing the same game ? If you s^-re, then shame, shame upon 
you ! I won't pronounce upon yom- motives : let the facts be 
their interpreters. What is the reason that a new edition of 
Fox's Martyrs, with hundreds of subscribers, and with the 
name of the Duke of Cumberland at their head, has been an- 
nounced ? Wherefore, from one extremity of the country to 
the other, in every city, town, and hamlet, is a perverse inge- 
nuity employed, in order to inspire the people of this country 
with a detestation of the religion of millions of their fellow-citi- 
zens ? Why is Popery, with her racks, her tortures, and her 
fagots, conjured up in order to appal the imagination of the 
English people ? Why is perjury to our God — treason to our 
sovereign — a disregard of every obligation, di^dne and human, 
attributed to us ? I leave you to answer those questions, and 
to give your answers, not only to the interrogatories which 
thus vehemently, and, I will own, indignantly I put to you, 
but to reply to those which must be administered to you, in 



SPEECH ON THE lEISH MUNICIPAL BILL. 313 

jour moments of meditation, by your own hearts. But, what- 
ever be your purpose in the religious excitement wliicli you 
are endeavoring to get up in this country, of this I am con- 
vinced — that the result of your expedients will correspond 
with their deserts, and that as we have prevailed over you be- 
fore, we shall again and again discomiit you. Yes, we, the 
Irish miUions, led on by men hke those that plead the cause 
of those milUons in this House, must (it is impossible that we 
should not) prevail ; and I am convinced that the people of 
England, so far from being disposed to array themselves 
against us, despite any remains of the prejudices which are 
fast passing away in this country, feel that we are entitled to 
the same privileges, and extend tons their sympathies in this 
good and glorious cause. 

What is that cause? I shall rapidly tell you. You took 
away our parliament — you took from us that parliament which, 
hke the House of Commons of this country, must have been 
under the control of the great majority of the people of Ire- 
land, and would not, and could not, have withheld what you 
so long refused us. Is there a man here who doubts that if 
the Union had not been conceded, we should have extorted 
Emancipation and Reform from our own House of Commons ? 
That House of Commons you bought, and paid for your bar- 
gain in gold ! ay, and paid for it in the most palpable and 
sordid form in which gold can be paid down. But, wliile this 
transaction was pending, you told us that all distinctions 
should be abolished between us, and that we should become 
hke unto yourselves. The great minister of the time, by whom 
that unexampled sale of our legislature was negotiated, held 
out equality with England as the splendid equivalent for the 
loss of our national representation ; and, with classical refer- 
ences, elucidated the nobleness of the compact into which he 
had persuaded the depositants of the rights of their country- 
men to enter. The act of Union was passed, and twenty-nine 
years elapsed before any effectual measure was taken to carry 
its real and substantial terms into effect. 

At last, our enfranchisement was won by our own energy 
and determination ; and, when it was in progress, we received 
assurances that, in every respect, we should be placed on a 



31-4 SELECT SPEECHES OF RICHARD L.\LOR SHEIL. 

footing with, our fellow-citizens; and it was more specially 
announced to us, that to corporations, and to all offices con- 
nected with them, we should be at once admissible. Pending 
this engagement, a bill is passed for the reform of the cor- 
porations of this country ; and in every important municipal 
locality in England, councillors are selected by the people as 
their representatives. This important measure having been 
carried here, the Irish people claim an extension of the same 
advantages ; and ground their title on the Union, on Eman- 
cipation, on Reform, and on the great principle of perfect 
equality between the two countries, on which the security of 
one country and the prosperity of both must depend. This 
demand, on the part of Ireland, is rejected ; and that, which 
to England no one was bold enough to deny, from Ireland you 
are determined, and you announce it, to withhold. Is this 
justice? You will say that it is, and I should be surprised 
if you did not say so. I should be surprised, indeed, if, while 
you are doing us wrong, you did not profess your soHcitude 
to do us justice. 

From the day on which Strongbow set his foot upon the 
shore of Ireland, Englishmen were never wanting in protesta- 
tions of their deep anxiety to do us justice : — even Straflford, 
the deserter of the people's cause — the renegade Wentworth, 
who gave evidence in Ireland of the spirit of instinctive ty- 
ranny which predominated in his character — even Strafford, 
while he trampled upon our rights, and trod upon the heart of 
the country, protested his solicitude to do justice to Ireland. 
What marvel is it, then, that gentlemen opposite should deal 
in such vehement protestations ? There is, however, one man, 
of great abilities, not a member of this House, but whose 
talents and whose boldness have placed him in the topmost 
place in his party — who, disdaining all imposture, and thinking 
it the best course to appeal directly to the religious and na- 
tional antipathies of the people of this country — abandoning 
aU reserve, and flinging off the slender veil by which his po- 
litical associates affect to cover, although they cannot hide, 
their motives — distinctly and audaciously tells the Irish people 
that they are not entitled to the same privileges as English- 
men ; and pronounces them, in any particular which could 



SPEECH ON THE IRISH MUNICIPAL BILL. 315 

enter liis minute envnneration of the circumstances bj wliicli 
fellow-citizenship is created, in race, identity, and religion — to 
be ahens — to be aliens in race — to be ahens in country — to be 
ahens in religion. 

Aliens ! good God ! was Arthur, Duke of "Wellington, in the 
House of Lords, and did he not start up and exclaim, " Hold ! 
I have seen the aliens do their duty?" The Duke of Wel- 
lington is not a man of an excitable temperament. His mind 
is of a cast too martial to be easily moved ; but notwithstand- 
ing his habitual inflexibihty, I cannot help thinking that when 
he heard his Roman Cathohc countrymen (for we are his 
countrymen) designated by a phrase as offensive as the abund- 
ant vocabulary of his eloquent confederate could supply — I 
cannot help thinking that he ought to have recollected the 
many fields of fight in which we have been contributors to his 
renown. " The battles, sieges, fortunes that he has passed," 
ought to have come back upon him. He ought to have re- 
membered that, from the earliest achievement in which he dis- 
played that military genius which has placed him foremost in 
the annals of modern warfare, down to the last and surpass- 
ing combat which has made his name imperishable — from 
Assaye to Waterloo — the Irish soldiers, with whom your ar- 
mies are are filled, were the inseparable auxiliaries to the glory 
with which his unparalleled successes have been crowned. 
Whose were the arms that drove your bayonets at Vimiera 
through the phalanxes that never reeled in the shock of war 
before ? What desperate valor climbed the steeps and filled 
the moats of Badajos ? AJl his victories should have rushed 
and crowded back upon his memory — Yimiera, Badajos, Sala- 
manca, Albuera, Toulouse, and, last of all, the greatest . 

Tell me, for you were there — I appeal to the gallant soldier 
before me (Sir Henry Hardinge,) from whose opinions I differ, 
but who bears, I know, a generous heart in an intrepid breast ; 
tell me, for you must needs remember — on that day when the 
destinies of mankind were trembling in the balance — while 
death fell in showers — when the artillery of France was 
leveUed with a precision of the most deadly science — when her 
legions, excited by the voice, and inspired by the example of 
theh mighty leader, rushed again and again to the onset — tell 



316 SELECT SPEECHES OF KICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 

me if, for an instant, when to hesitate for an instant was to be 
lost, the "ahens" blenched? And when at length the mo- 
ment for the last and decisive movement had arrived, and the 
valor which had so long been wisely checked, was at last let 
loose — when, with words famihar, but immortal, the great cap- 
tain commanded the great assault — tell me, if Catholic Ireland, 
with less heroic valor than the natives of this your own glo- 
rious country, precipitated herself upon the foe ? The blood 
of England, Scotland, and of Ireland, flowed in the same 
stream, and drenched the same field. When the chiU morning 
dawned, their dead lay cold and stark together ; — in the same 
deep pit their bodies were deposited — the green corn of spring 
is noAV breaking from their commingled dust — the dew falls 
from heaven upon their union in the grave. Partakers in every 
peril — in the glory shall we not be permitted to participate ; 
and shall we be told, as a requital, that we are estranged from 
the noble country for whose salvation our hfe-blood was 
poured out ? 



SPEECH ON THE IRISH ARMS BILL, 

IN THE HOUSE OP COMMONS, MAY 19, 1843. 



If I were convinced that the Arms Bill, even in its present 
most obnoxious shape, was necessary for the repression of 
crime, I should reluctantly indeed, but strenuously, sustain 
it ; but of its utter inefficiency for the attainment of that legi- 
timate purpose, in which it is obligatory upon us all to con- 
cur, I am thoroughly persuaded. It is not to the want of an 
Arms Bill such as this, it is to the imperfect, I am almost 
justified in caUing it the impotent administration of justice, 
that the atrocities, by which certain districts in Ireland are 
unfortunately characterized, are to be ascribed. In the coun- 
ty of Tipperary the prosecutions at the assizes are begun, con- 
ducted, and terminated in such a manner as to secure impun- 
ity to crime. How has it come to pass, that the offences 



SPEECH ON THE IKISH ARMS BILL. 317 

which fall within the jurisdiction of the assistant-barrister, and 
are prosecuted by the local solicitor, have so signally dimin- 
ished? I attribute that remarkable decrease to two causes ; 
first, to the high judicial qualities, the talent, the firmness, the 
impartiality which has won the confidence of all parties, by 
which Mr. Howley, the assistant-barrister, is distinguished ; 
and in the next place, to the signal usefulness of the local so- 
licitor for the Crown, (Mr. Cahill,) who unites with great ability 
a perfect knowledge of the country ; has the best opportuni- 
ties of ascertaining every incident connected with the cases in 
which he is concerned ; is well acquainted with the character 
of every witness for the prosecution and the defence ; never 
puts innocence in peril ; and never permits ruffianism to es- 
cape. But while minor violations of the law are prosecuted 
with so much effect, what course is taken at the assizes ? I 
beg most distinctly to state that nothing can be more remote 
from my intention than to speak in the language of personal 
depreciation of Mr. Kemmis, the Grown solicitor for the Lein- 
ster circuit, or to suggest that a local solicitor should be em- 
ployed in his place, without adding, that he should receive for 
any loss he may sustain the most ample compensation. But 
granting him to possess the highest professional qualifications, 
I have no hesitation at the same time in stating that the busi- 
ness of the Crown cannot be efficiently carried on by a legal 
absentee, who knows nothing of the county, is utterly ignorant 
of the witnesses produced for or against the Crown, is utterly 
unable, not from any want of capacity, but from his position, to 
suggest or advise the means by which truth can be substan- 
tiated, and falsehood can be confuted, is hurried from one as- 
size town to another, and must get up his briefs with inevita- 
ble precipitation, for the information of counsel, who are op- 
posed by the most skillful advocates, aided by a local solicitor 
for the defence, by whom every imaginable expedient for the 
frustration of the Crown is employed. It is obvious that, 
under this system, you give to crime advantages incalculably 
great. Another suggestion I shall, from a sense of duty — 
from my solicitude for the public tranquillity — venture to make. 
You resort to informers, and you pay them largely for their 
corrupt contribution to the enforcement of the law, but to 



318 SELECT SPEECHES OF TJCHARD LALOR SHEIL. 

honest witnesses adequate protection is not given. Some 
years ago the house of a person of the name of Crawford was 
attacked, and he was beaten almost to death. He was afraid 
to prosecute. He hved in my neighborhood. I obtained from 
the government an undertaking that he and his family should 
be sent to one of the colonies, and should be provided for. 
He was prevailed on to prosecute, and justice was done, and 
a most useful example made. If you will pledge yourselves to 
protect the witnesses for the Crown, by enabhng them to emi- 
grate, and by compensating them for the loss of their country, 
you will effect much more than by the unconstitutional pro- 
ceeding which I am aware your high partisans invite you to 
adoj^t. It would be far niore befitting in the landed proprie- 
tors to attend at the assizes, and perform their duty on crimi- 
nal trials, than to call for a violation of a great public right. 
If there is a special commission got up with parade, and 
attended by the Attorney- General, with a retinue of counsel, 
the chief gentlemen of the county do not think it inconsistent 
with their dignity to act on the petty jury ; but at the assizes, 
though the crimes to be prosecuted are of the same class, the 
juries are wholly different. The petty jury is considered an 
ungenteel and low concern ; the balance in which human life 
is trembling is committed to coarser and less aristocratic sus- 
tainments, and complaints are afterwards made of the consti- 
tution of juries by the very men who vote it, what they call, in 
then- familiar parlance, a " bore " to attend. There is nothing 
v.'hich I more strongly deprecate than the setting aside of 
juries by the Crown, except for the clearest and most indisputa- 
ble reasons, but, on the other hand, I do think that the attend- 
ance of Roman Catholics and Protestants, of station and influ- 
ence, on the criminal jury, should be enforced, and that, if 
necessary, fines of £500 or £600 should be imposed upon 
them. The utmost care should of course be taken that the 
jmles should not be exclusive, and that no ground for imputa- 
tion should be afforded ; but that precaution being adopted, it 
is clear that the verdicts found by that class of men, whether 
of acquittal or of condemnation, would meet the general sanc- 
tion. I am very well aware that the gentry of the country will 
be very adverse to this proposition ; but they should bear in 



SPEECH ON THE lEISH AEMS BILL. 319 

mind how large a stake tliey have in the tranquillity of the 
country, which will be far better promoted by these means 
than by an Arms Bill, which will take from honest men the 
means of defence, and will not deprive the turbulent and the 
lawless of the means of aggression. When mm-der becomes 
lucrative, it is not easy to deprive the assassin of the tools of 
his profitable trade. If you could succeed in depriving him 
of his more noisy implements of death, you would but teach 
him to substitute a more silent but not less efficacious weapon : 
but you cannot frame a law which he will not readily evade. 
The wretch who is not appalled at murder will not tremble at 
an Arms Bill — yom' penalties of ten or twenty pounds will be 
scorned by men who put existence into habitual peril. These 
are among my reasons for thinking that the Arms Bill will not 
be in any degree conducive to the purpose it has ostensibly in 
view, while by its enactment, without obtaining any counter- 
vailing benefit, you commit a manifest trespass upon one of 
the chief constitutional rights which the bill, deriving its de- 
signation from those rights, has received. 

But my main objection to this bill is founded upon the dis- 
tinction which it establishes between England and Ireland. 
" Repeal the Union — restore the Heptarchy !" Thus exclaimed 
George Canning, and stamped on the floor of this house as he 
gave utterance to a comparison in absurdity, which has been 
often cited. But that exclamation may be turned to an 
account, different from that to which it is applied. Restore 
the heptarchy — repeal the union. Good. But take up the 
map of England, and mark the subdivisions into which this 
your noble island was once distributed, and then suppose that 
in this assembly of wise men — this Imperial Parhament — ^you 
vfere to ordain that there should be one law in what once was 
the kingdom of Kent, and another in what once was the king- 
dom of Mercia — that in Essex there should be one municipal 
franchise, and in Sussex there should be another ; that among 
the East Angles there should be one parliamentary franchise, 
and in Wessex there should be another ; and that while through 
the rest of the island the Bill of Rights should be regarded as 
the inviolate and inviolable charter of British liberty, in the 
kingdom of Northumberland, an Arms Bill, by which the ele- 



320 SELECT SrEECHES OF LICIIAED LALOR SKEIL. 

mentaiy principles of British freedom should be set at nought, 
should be enacted — would you not say that the restoration of 
the heptarchy could scarcely be more preposterous ? 

What a mockery it is, what an offence it is to our feehngs, 
what an insult to the understanding it is to expatiate upon the 
advantages of the Union, and bid us rejoice that we are admit- 
ted to the great imperial co-partnership in power, while you 
are every day making the most odious distinctions between 
the two countries, establishing discriminating rights which are 
infinitely worse than discriminating duties, and furnishing the 
champions of Eepeal with pretences more plausible, for insist- 
ing that if for England and for Ireland different laws are requi- 
site, for Ireland and for England different lawgivers are re- 
quired. My chief, my great objection to this measure is, that 
it is founded upon the fatal poHcy to which Englishmen have 
so long adhered, and from which it is so difficult to detach 
them, of treating Ireland as a mere provincial appurtenance, 
instead of regarding her as part and parcel of the realm. 
You are influenced by a kind of instinct of domination, 
which it requires no ordinary effort of your reason to over- 
come. 

I do not think that by Englishmen an Arms Bill like this 
w^ould be endured. That observation does not rest on mere con- 
jecture ; in the year 1819, this country was in a most peril- 
ous condition. It appeared from a report made by a secret 
committee of which the present Lord Derby was the chairman, 
that large bodies of men were trained to the use of arms in the 
dead of the night, in sequestered places ; that a revolutionary 
movement, to be accomphshed by disciplined insurrection, was 
contemplated, and that revolt was organized for war. In this 
state of things an English Arms Bill, one of the Six Acts, was 
proposed. Lord Castlereagh was then leader of the House of 
Commons, but although he had served his apprenticeshij) in 
Ireland — although he had dissected in Ireland before he 
attempted to operate in England ; and although his hand 
was pecuharly steady, and he was admitted on all hands not 
to be destitute of determination, still he did not think it pru- 
dent to pro^jose for England such a bill as for Ireland you 
have thought it judicious to introduce. There is the English 



SPEECH ON THE IRISH ARMS BILL, 321 

Arms Bill of 1819. It is comprised in a single page ; look at 
it ; the ocular comparison will not be inappropriate ; here is 
the Irish Arms Bill, a whole volume of coercion, in which 
tyranny is elaborated in every possible diversity of form which 
it was possible to impart to it. 

In the English Arms Bill no penalty whatever was inflicted 
for the possession of arms : in your Arms Bill, an Irishman 
can be transported for seven years for having arms in his 
possession. But although the Enghsh Arms Bill was moder- 
ate when compared with the Irish, yet Lord Grey denounced 
it in the House of Lords. In the House of Commons, Mr. 
Henry Brougham exclaimed : " Am I an EngUshman ?, for I 
begin to doubt it, when measures so utterly abhorrent from 
the first principles of British liberty are audaciously pro- 
pounded to us ?" That great orator then proceeded to offer 
up an aspiration that the people would rise up in a simulta- 
neous revolt and sweep away the government by which a great 
r:acrilege upon the constitution had been perpetrated. What 
^v'ould he have said— how would Lord Castlereagh have been 
blasted by the hghtning and appalled by the thunder of his 
eloquence if a bill had been brought forward, under which the 
blacksmiths of England should be licensed, under which the 
registry of arms was made dependent on a bench of capricious 
magisterial partisans, under which an Enghshman might be 
transported for seven years, for exercising the privilege se- 
cured to him. by the Bill of Eights ; and every pistol, gun, and 
blunderbuss was to be put through that process of branding, 
the very motion of which, in 1831,. made by the noble lord 
opposite, the Secretary for the Colonies, the then Secretary 
for Ireland, produced an outburst of indignation. It is said 
that this bill has nothing new. That is a mistake — ^it contains 
many novelties in despotism, many curiosities in domination. 
My friend the member for Kochdale has pointed them out. 
But sup]30sing that everything was old in this bill, does not 
your defence rest on a perseverance in oppression, on that 
fatal tenacity with which you chng to a system, to which your 
experience should tell you that it is folly to adhere ? Tliis 
bill, it was observed by the noble lord the Secretary for Ire- 
land, was found, in 1807, in the portfoHo of the "Whig Secre- 



322 SELECT SPEECHES OF RICHAED LALOR SEEIL. 

taiy. The "Whigs had prepared a measure of coercion and of 
reUef. The Tories turned them out on the measure of rehef, 
and of the measure of coercion took a Conservative care. 

The Secretary for Ireland stated that the first Arms Bill was 
introduced in 1807 by Sir Arthur Wellesley ! The transition 
which has taken place from Sir Arthur Wellesley — from the 
official of Dublin Castle to the warrior, by whose fame the 
world is filled — is not greater than the transition of the coun- 
try which gave him bhth, from enslaved and degraded to en- 
franchised and hberated Ireland, who has grown too gigantic 
for your chains, and dilated to dimensions which your fetters 
wiU no longer fit. But although the project of an Arms Bill 
was unfortunately found in the Whig portfoho, that measure 
was condemned at the time by some of the most distinguished 
members of that great party. Hear what Sir Samuel Bomilly 
says of the measure in his diary. In speaking of the Insur- 
rection Act and the Arms Bill, which he regarded as near akin, 
he says (vol. vi., p. 214) : 

" The measure appeared to me so impohtic, so unjust, and 
likely to produce so much mischief, that I determined, if any . 
person divided the House, to vote against it. I did not speak 
against the bill ; that it would pass, whatever might be said 
against it, I could not doubt ; and therefore thought that to 
state my objections against it, could have no other effect than 
to increase the mischief which I wished to prevent. What 
triumphant arguments will this bill, and that which is depend- 
ing in the House for preventing the people having arms, fur- 
nish the disaffected with in Ireland ? What laws more tyran- 
nical could they have to dread, if the French yoke were im- 
posed on them ? To adopt such a measure at a moment like 
the present, appears to me to be httle short of madness. Un- 
fortunately the measure had been in the contemplation of the 
late ministry. They had left a draft of the bill in the Secre- 
tary of State's office, and they were now ashamed to oppose, 
what some of themselves had thought of proposing. The At- 
torney and Sohcitor of Ireland had approved of the bill, but 
Pigot and myself had never heard that such a matter was in 
agitation, till it was brought into the House, by the present 
ministers." 



SPEECH ON THE IRISH AEMS BILL. 323 

Sucli was the opinion of Sir Samuel Komilly ; in the judg- 
ment of the majority of this House, as it is at present consti- 
tuted, that opinion may have no weight, but I am able to refer 
to the authority of a distinguished statesman, who is at this 
moment in the fuU fruition of the confidence of parliament. 
That eminent person stated that — 

" The speaker asked what was the melancholy fact ? That 
scarcely one year had at any period elapsed since the Union 
during which Ireland was governed by the ordinary course of 
law ; that in 1800 we found the Habeas Corpus Act suspended, 
and an act for the suppression of rebelhon in force ; that in 
1801 it was continued ; in 1802 it expired ; in 1803 disturb- 
ances occurred, and Lord Kilwarden was murdered by a 
savage mob ; that in 1804 the act was renewed ; in 1806 dis- 
orders arose, and the Insurrection Act was introduced in con- 
sequence ; in 1810 and 1815 the Insurrection Act was renewed ; 
and in 1825 an act was passed for the suppression of danger- 
ous associations, and particularly of the Catholic Association : 
in 1826 the act was continued, and in 1827 it expired ; and 
after this enumeration of acts of impoHcy and injustice he 
asked, ' Shall this state of things continue without an effort to 
remedy it?' " 

Who was it that spoke these words ? Were they spoken by 
Henry Brougham ? Were they spoken by Lord John Russell ? 
No : — the man that gave utterance to these words was no less 
a person than the First Lord of the Treasury, Sir Robert Peel, 
the ruler in some sort of this great and majestic empire ; it 
was by him that the policy, with which this very measure is 
connected, was virtuously and vehemently denounced. The 
speech to which I have referred was spoken in 1829, before 
Cathohc Emancipation was actually passed, it was, indeed, 
the speech in which the whole plan of emancipation was pro- 
pounded. 

But if the poHcy, thus strenuously condemned by the Prime 
Minister, was deserving of censure before the great measure 
of Catholic enfranchisement, is it not in the highest degree 
incongruous, is it not indeed monstrous on the part of the 
government, of which that right honorable gentleman is the 
head, to propound the very measure Avhich had been the ob- 



821 SELECT SrEECHES OF RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 

ject of his almost unqualified condemnation ? But I shall be 
told that the predictions made by the Eoman Catholic leaders 
hare been falsified, and that they have themselves done their 
utmost to prevent the fulfillment of their prophecies. [Hear, 
hear!] You say " hear, hear ;" but yoar derisive cheering is 
inappropriate. If Koman CathoHc Emancipation had been car- 
ried, when the Catliohc clergy could have been connected by 
what Mr, O'Connell called a golden Hnk, with the state, those 
predictions would, in all likelihood, have been fulfilled, but 
when you yourselves permitted Emancipation to be, I will not 
say extorted, but won from you by the means through which it 
was obtained, what results would you have reasonably antici- 
pated, but those to which you have yourselves most essentially 
contributed ? How could you expect that seven millions of your 
fellow-citizens could by possibility acquiesce in an institution 
against which reason and justice concurrently revolt ? Ho\r 
could it be expected that after Emancipation, when England 
was agitated by the Keform question, Ireland should remain 
jDassive and apathetic, and should not demand a redress of 
those grievances, which pressed upon her far more heavily 
than any abuse connected with your former parHamentary 
sj^stem ? And now, when from morn till night, and from night 
till morn, Enghshmen cry out that the Union must be main- 
tained, how can any one of you imagine that we shall not 
insist that the principles upon which the Union was founded, 
should be carried into effect, and that all odious distinctions 
between the two countries shall be abohshed? You think 
that the Eepealers of Ireland are conspicuously in the wrong ; 
are you sure that you are yourselves conspicuously in the 
right ? 

Passing over the questions connected with the Estabhshed 
Church, questions which are dormant, but not dead, and 
which I have not the shghtest doubt that your impohcy will 
revive, I ask you, whether in the course pursued in the Muni- 
cipal BiU you have evinced a just desire to place England and 
Ireland upon a level ? Was the language employed by the no- 
ble and learned lord, who has the conscience of the sovereign 
in his keeping, and which is fresh in the memory of the Irish 
people, cjj^lculated to reconcile us to the legislative dominion 



SPEECH ON THE IRISH ARMS BILL 325 

of this country ? You withheld the Municipal Bill as long as 
with safety you could deny it to us, and when at last you were 
forced to yield, you still adhered to your old habit of distinc- 
tinction — you created a different franchise for the two coun- 
tries, and although you gained nothing whatever for your 
party in the result, and were completely baffled, as I told you 
you would beyond aU doubt be, you left in the Municipal Bill 
an envenomed sting behind. But let us turn to the other 
instances, in which your dispositions towards Ireland are too 
faithfully exemplified. Let us turn to the registration of votes, 
from the registration of arms. Where is your Kegistration 
Bill ? I am putting to you the question which, three years 
ago, was put again and again to the Whig Government by 
their antagonists. "Where is the Eegistration Bill?" cried 
Mr. Baron Lefroy ? " Where is the Registration Bill ?" cried 
Mr. Jackson, now a judge of the Common Pleas. " Where is 
the Eegistration Bill?" cried Mr. Litton, now a Master in 
Chancery. But more loudly and more vehemently than all 
the rest — " Where, where is the Eegistration Bill ?" cried the 
noble lord, the Secretary for the Colonies. Not a month, not 
a week, not a day was to be lost in the judgment of the anx- 
iously impatient lord. The Whigs brought in a bill, and gave 
a liberal definition of the franchise ; their object was to estab- 
lish a constituency commensurate with the wealth, and the 
intelligence, and in some degree with the numbers of the Irish 
people. The measure was defeated ; and the noble lord, who 
was possessed at the time with a passion for legislating for 
the Irish people, provided a bill at the close of 1841, by which 
the independence of the people of Ireland would have been 
totally unprotected, and of which the bare proposal has done 
more to advance the cause of Eepeal than all the speeches 
which the member for Cork (Mr. O'Connell) had ever delivered 
upon the subject. Parliament was dissolved, a new parliament 
was elected, and a Tory ministry was the result. As soon as 
the Tories were fully installed in office, it was but natural to 
ask them the question which they had put so often, " Where 
is the Registration Bill?" Some vague intimation was given 
that the government would bring forward a measure in the 
course of the session. In the course of the session, the Long- 



326 SELECT SPEECHES OF EICHAED LALOE SHEIL. 

ford committee excluded Mr. White from parliament, but at 
the same time reported, that the law was so doubtful, had led 
to more contrary decisions, and had been the subject of so 
much contention among the Irish judges, that it was incum- 
bent on the government to settle the question, and to bring 
in a declaratory act ; still nothing was done in 1842. At the 
commencement of the present session, the Secretary for the 
Home Department was asked what he meant to do, in refer- 
ence to the Kegistration Bill, the eternal Registration Bill ? 
He answered, " Oh, we will first proceed with the Enghsh Reg- 
istration Bill." But for the English Registration Bill there was 
no urgent necessity — there was no pretence whatever for giv- 
ing the English precedence over the Irish measure. Well, the 
English Registration Bill is brought in and passed, and then 
the question is renewed, "Where is the Irish Registration 
Bill?" And to that question what reply was given? Oh, we 
must first bring in the Irish Arms Bill. Thus, notwithstand- 
ing the reiterated demand for the Irish Registration Bill made 
by the Tories themselves when out of office, notwithstanding 
the report of the Longford Election Committee, notwithstand- 
ing the repeated engagements to bring the measure forward, 
not only is not that measure produced, but to the Arms Bill, 
to this outrage upon the just principles of liberty, the bill 
declaratory of the parliamentary franchise of the people of 
Ireland is postponed. And on what ground has this prece- 
dence of the Arms BiU been maintained ? wherefore is it that 
everything is to be postponed to an Arms Bill ? 

The Secretary for Ireland tells us, that order must be as- 
serted before freedom is conferred, that crime must be re- 
pressed, and that the " thirst for arms," that was his expres- 
sion, must be repressed. The thirst for arms ! There is 
another thu'st, for which you have taten care to provide. 
Have you, who profess yourselves to be guardians of the na- 
tional morality, manifested an uniform and undeviating sohci- 
tude for the virtue of the people over whom you are appointed 
to watch ? Despite of every remonstrance, notwithstanding 
the most earnest expostulation, did you not persist in the 
enactment of a financial measure, which has given the strong- 
est stimulant to crime, and has already produced some of the 



SPEECH ON THE lEISH AEMS BILL. 327 

most deleterious effects which, it was foretold, would be ine- 
vitably derived from it. You know full well, that the most 
frightful crimes which have been perpetrated in Ireland, have 
had their origin in those habits of intoxication, which the 
Evangelist of Temperance, if I may so call him, had so ef- 
fectually restrained, until the Chancellor of the Exchequer had 
determined to counteract his noble efforts. Every private stiU 
is a hot-spring, from which atrocity gushes up, and supphes 
those draughts of fire, with which ferocious men madden 
themselves to murder, and drive away every sentiment of 
humanity and of remorse, and surrender themselves to the 
demon that takes possession of their hearts. And yet you 
talk to us of the necessity of suppressing crime being para- 
mount to every other consideration, and of the "thirst for 
arms," and deal in all that false sentimentahty, with which 
the real pm-pose by which you are actuated, is so thinly and 
imperfectly disguised. 

It is not wonderful that when such is the spirit in which you 
legislate for Ireland, that the people of Ireland, weary of and 
disgusted with your unfairness and incapacity, should demand 
the restitution of their parliament, and insist upon the right 
of governing themselves. And how has the First Lord of the 
Treasury met the requisition for seK-government, which the 
Irish people had preferred to him? He came down to the 
House with a well meditated reply to the question put to him 
by the noble lord, (Lord Jocelyn,) and referring to the answer 
of King William the Fourth, in which that monarch expressed 
himself opposed to the Eepeal of the Union, stated her Ma- 
jesty's coincidence with that opinion, but omitted the con- 
cihatory assurances with which that opinion was accompanied. 
I am very far from believing that the right honorable baronet, 
as has been imputed to him, intended, by a reference to his 
sovereign, to produce any refrigeration in the feelings of warm 
attachment which the people of Ireland entertain towards 
their beloved sovereign ; I think, that as he appealed in the 
name of the parliament to their fears, he appealed in the 
name of their sovereign to the affections of the Irish people. 
For my own part, as long as I shall be permitted to refer to 
a document which has become a part of history, I never shall 



328 SELECT SPEECHES OF EICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 

object to any reference to tlie opinions of my sovereign with 
regard to Ireland. I hold in my hand a letter written by Lord 
John Eussell to Lord Normanby, by the command of his 
sovereign, on her accession to the throne. That letter is in 
the foUowing words : 

" Whitehall, July 18, 1837. 

"Mr LoED : In confiding again to your Excellency the important 
charge of administering the affairs of Ireland in her Majesty's name, the 
Queen has commanded me to express to your Excellency her Majesty's 
entire aj)i3robatiou of your past conduct, and her desire that you 
should continue to be guided by the same jprinciples on which you have 
hitherto acted. 

"The Queen willingly recognizes in her Irish subjects a spirit of 
loyalty and devotion to her person and government. 

"Her Majesty is desirous to see them in the full enjoyment of that 
civil and jaolitical equahty which, by a recent statute, they are fully en- 
titled to, and her Majesty is persuaded that when invidious distinctions 
are altogether obliterated, her throne will be more secure and her people 
more truly united. 

" The Queen has seen with satisfaction the tranquillity which has 
lately prevailed in Ireland, and has learned with pleasure that the gene- 
ral habits of the people are in a state of progressive improvement aris- 
ing from their confidence in the just administration of the power of 
government. 

"I am commanded by her Majesty to express to you her Majesty's 
cordial wishes for the continued success of your administration ; and 
your Excellency may be assured that your efforts will meet with firm sup- 
port from her Majesty. 

"The Queen further desires that you will assure her Irish subjects of 
her impartial protection. John Russell." 

Such was the language dictated by the young Queen of Eng- 
land to her minister. She ' had read the history of Ireland — 
she had perused (and in the perusal was not, I am sure, un- 
moved) the narrative of oppression and woe ; she knew that 
for great wi'ongs a great compensation was due to us ; she 
felt more than joy at witnessing the blessed fruits which had 
resulted from the first experiment in justice, and she charged 
her minister to express her deep solicitude for the welfare of 
the people of Ireland. Never did a sovereign impose upon a 
minister a more pleasurable office. With what admiration, 
with what a sentiment of respectful and reverential admiration 



SPEECH ON THE IRISH ARMS BILL. 329 

must he have looked upon that young and imperial lady, wlien, 
in the fine morning of her life, and in the dawn of her re- 
splendent royalty, he beheld her with the most brilliant diadem 
in the world glittering upon her smooth and unruffled fore- 
head, with her countenance beaming with dignified emotion, 
and heard her, with that voice which seems to have been given 
to her for the utterance of no other language than that of 
gentleness and of mercy, giving expression to her affectionate 
and lofty sympathy for an unfortunate, but a brave, a chival- 
rous, and for her an enthusiastically loyal and unalteraoly de- 
voted people. How different a spectacle does Ireland now 
present from that which it then presented to the contemplation 
of her sovereign! She cannot be insensible to the change. 
In return for your stern advice to your sovereign, did you not 
receive a reciprocal admonition ; and did she not tell you, or 
did not your own conscience tell you to look on Ireland, and 
to compare her condition under a Whig and Conservative 
administration ? 

But it is not with Whig policy alone tliat your policy should 
be compared ; your own policy in a country more fortunate 
than ours furnishes almost an appropriate matter of adjura- 
tion. Why do you tell me, in the name of common consisten- 
cy and plain sense, wherefore do you adopt in Canada a pol- 
icy so utterly opposite from that which in Ireland it is your 
and our misfortune that you should pursue? From a sys- 
tem so diametrically opposed, how can the same results be ex- 
pected to follow j* In Canada, under the old colonial rule, 
there prevailed a strong addiction to democracy, a leaning 
towards the great repubhc in their vicinage, a deep hatred of 
England, and a spirit which broke at last into a sanguinary and 
exceedingly costly rebelHon. You had the sound feeling and 
the sound sense to open your eyes at last to the series of mis- 
takes, which successive governments had committed with regard 
to Canada ; your policy was not only changed but revolution- 
ized ; you abandoned the " family compact ;" you placed the 
government in sympathy with the people, and you raised to 
office men who had been pursued to the death, and conferred 
honors upon those to whom decapitation, had they been ar- 
rested, would at one period have been awarded. The result 



330 SELECT SPEECHES OF EICHARD LALOR SHELL. 

has been what all wise men had anticipated and what all good 
men had desii-ed. 

In a late debate I heard the Prime Minister expatiate upon 
the necessity of dealing in reference to Canada, in the most 
Hberal and conciliatory spirit, and when I heard him, I could 
not refrain from exclaiming : " Oh ! that for Ireland, for un- 
happy Ii-eland — oh ! that for my country, he would feel as he 
does towards Canada, and in its regard, act the same generous 
part !" That prayer which rose involuntarily from my lips, I 
now — jes, I now venture to address you. The part which in 
Canada you have had the wisdom and the virtue to act, have 
in Ireland, (but oh ! without a civil war !) have the virtue and 
the wisdom to follow. Rid, rid yourself in Ireland of " the fam- 
ily compact." Banish Orangeism from the Castle ; put your- 
selves into contact in place of putting yourselves into collision 
with the people ; reform the Protestant Church ; conciHate 
the Cathohc priesthood ; disaim us, but not of the weapons 
against which this measure is directed — strip us of that triple 
panoply with which he who hath his quarrel just is invested — do 
this, and if you will do this, you will do far more for the tran- 
quilKzation of Ireland, for the consohdation of the empire, and 
for your own renown, than if you were by arms bills and by 
coercion acts, and by a whole chain of despotic enactments, to 
succeed in inflicting upon Ireland that bad, that false, that 
deceptive, that desolate tranquilHty w^hich the history of the 
w^orld, which all the philosophy that teaches by example, which 
the experience of every British statesman,, which, above all, 
your own experience should teach you, is sure to be followed 
by calamities greater than any by which it was preceded. 



THE IKISH STATE TRIALS. 

SPEECH IN THE COUET OF QUEEN's BENCH, IN lEELAND, IN THE 
CASE OE THE QUEEN V. DANIEL o'CONNELL, JOHN O'CONNELL, 
AND OTHERS, IN DEFENCE OF MR. JOHN O'CONNELL. 



I AM counsel for Mr. Jolin O'Connell. The importance of 
this case is not susceptible of exaggeration, and I do not speak 
in the language of hyperbole when I say that the attention of 
the empire is directed to the spot in which we are assembled. 
How great is the trust reposed in you — how great is the task 
^vhich I have undertaken to perform ! Conscious of its mag- 
nitude, I have risen to address you, not unmoved, but undis- 
mayed ; no— not unmoved — ^for at this moment how many inci- 
dents of my own poHtical Hfe come back upon me, when I look 
upon my great poHtical benefactor, my deliverer, and my friend ; 
but of the emotion by which I acknowledge myself to be pro- 
foundly stirred, although I will not permit myself to be subdued 
by it, sohcitude forms no part. I have great rehance upon you 
—upon the ascendency of principle over prejudice in your 
minds ; and I am not entirely without rehance upon myself. 
I do not speak in the language of vain-glorious seK-compla- 
cency when I say this. I know that I am surrounded by men 
infinitely superior to me in every forensic, and in almost every 
intellectual qualification. My confidence is derived, not from 
any overweening estimate of my own faculties, but from a 
thorough conviction of the innocence of my chent. I know — 
and I appear in some sort not only as an advocate but a wit- 
ness before you — I know him to be innocent of the misdeeds 
laid to his charge. The same blood flows through their veins 
— the same feelings circulate through their hearts : the son 
and the father are in all poHtical regards the same, and with 
the father I have toiled in no dishonorable companionship for 
more than hah my life in that great work, which it his chief 
praise that it was conceived in the spirit of peace — that in the 
spirit of peace it was carried out — and that in the spirit of peace 



332 SELECT SrEECHES OF EICHARD LALOIl SHEIL. 

it was brought by him to its glorious consummation. I am ac- 
quainted with every feature of his character, Avith his thoughts, 
hopes, fears, aspirations. I have — if I may venture to say — a 
full cognizance of every pulsation of his heart. I know — I am 
sure as that I am a living man — that from the sanguinary mis- 
deeds imputed to him, he shrinks with abhorrence. It is this 
persuasion — profound, impassioned — and I trust that it will 
prove contagious — which will sustain me in the midst of the 
exhaustion incidental to this lengthened trial ; will enable me 
to overcome the illness under which I am at this moment 
laboring ; will raise me to the height of tliis great argument 
and lift me to a level with the lofty topics which I shall have 
occasion to treat in resisting a prosecution, to which in the 
annals of criminal jurisprudence in this country no parallel can 
be found. 

Gentlemen, the Attorney-General, in a statement of eleven 
or twelve hours' duration, read a long series of extracts from 
speeches and pubhcations, extending over a period of nearly 
nine months. At the termination of every passage which was 
cited by him, he gave utterance to expressions of strong re- 
sentment against the men by whom sentiments so noxious were 
circulated, in language most envenomed. If, gentlemen of the 
jury, his anger was not simulated; if his indignation was not 
merely official ; if he spoke as he felt, how does it come to pass 
that no single step was ever taken by him for the purpose of 
arresting the progress of an evil represented by him to be so 
calamitous ? He told you that the country was traversed by 
incendiaries who set fire to the passions of the people ; the 
whole fabric of society, according to the Attorney-General, for 
the last nine months has been in a blaze ; wherefore then did 
he stand with folded arms to gaze at the conflagration ? 
Where were the Castle fire-engines — where was the indictment 
— and of ex officio information what had become ? Is there 
not too much reason to think that a project was formed, or 
rather that a plot was concocted, to decoy the traversers, and 
that a connivance, amounting almost to sanction, was dehber- 
ately adopted as a part of the pohcy of the government, in 
order to betray the traversers into indiscretions of which ad- 
vantage was, in due time, to be taken ? 



IKISH STATE TEIALS. 333 

I have heard it said that it was criminal to tell the people 
to "bide their time ;" * but is the government to "bide its 
time," in order to turn popular excitement to account? The 
pubhc prosecutor who gives an indh-ect encouragement to agi- 
tation, in order that he may afterwards more effectually fall 
upon it, bears some moral affinity to the informer, who pro- 
vokes the crime from whose denunciation his ignominious 
hvelihood is derived. Has the Attorney-General adopted a 
course worthy of his great office — worthy of the ostensible 
head of the Irish bar, and the representative of its intellect in 
the House of Commons ? Is it befitting that the successor of 
Saurin, and of Plunket, who should "keep watch and Avard" 
from his high station over the pubhc safety, should descend to 
the performance of functions worthy only of a commissary of 
the French pohce ; and in place of being the sentinel, should 
become the "Artful Dodger" of the state? But what, you 
may ask, could be the motive of tlie right honorable gentle- 
man for pursuing the course he has adopted, and for which no 
explanation has been attempted by him ? He could not have 
obtained any advantage signaUy serviceable to his party by 
prosecuting Mr. Duffy or Dr. Gray, for strong articles in their 
newspapers ; or by prosecuting Mr. Steele or Mr. Tierney, for 
attending unlawful assembhes. He did not fish with lines — li I 
may avail myself of an illustration derived from the habits of 
my constituents at Dungarvan — but cast a wide and nicely con- 
structed trammel-net, in order that by a kind of nuraculous 
catch he might take the great agitator leviathan himself, a 
member of parhament — Mr. Steele, three editors of newspa- 
pers, and a pair of priests, in one stupendous haul together. 
But there was another object still more important to be gaiaed. 
Had the Attorney-General prosecuted individuals for the use 
of violent language, or for attending unlawful meetings, each 
individual would have been held responsible for his own acts ; 
but in a prosecution for conspiracy, which is open to every 
one of the objections apphcable to constructive treason, the 
acts and the speeches of one man are given in evidence agauist 
another, although the latter may have been at the distance 

* One of the songs of the Nation is entitled " Bide your time." 



334 SELECT SPEECHES OF EICHAllD LALOE SHEIL. 

of a hundred miles when the circumstances used against him 
as evidence, and of Avhich he had no sort of cognizance, took 
place. 

By prosecuting Mr. O'Connell for a conspiracy, the Attor- 
ney-General treats him exactly as if he were the editor of the 
Nation, the editor of the Freeman, and the editor of the Pilot. 
Indeed, if five or six other editors of newspapers in the coun- 
try had been joined as traversers, for every line in their news- 
papers, Mr. O'Connell would be held responsible. There is 
one English gentleman, I beheve, upon that jury. If a prose- 
cution for a conspiracy were instituted against the Anti-Corn 
Law League in England, would he not think it very hard 
indeed that Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright should be held an- 
swerable for every article in the Chronicle, in the Globe, and 
in the Sun ? How large a portion of the case of the Crown 
depends upon this implication of Mr. O'ConneU with three 
Dublin newspapers ? He is accused of conspiring with men 
who certainly never conspired with each other. For those 
who know anything of newspapers are aware that they are 
mercantile speculations — the property in them is held by 
shares— and that the very circumstance of their being engaged 
in the same politics alienates the proprietors from each other. 
They pay their addresses to the same mistress, and cordially 
detest each other. I remember to have heard Mr. Barnes, the 
celebrated editor of the Times newspaper, once ask Mr. Rogers 
what manner of man was a Mr. Tompkins ? To which Mr. 
Eogers replied, " he was a dull dog, who read the Morning 
Herald." 

Let us turn for a moment from the repeal to the anti-repeal 
party. You would smile, I think, at the suggestion that Mr. 
Murray Mansfield, the proprietor of the Evening Packet, and 
Mr. Remmy Sheehan, the proprietor of the Evening Mail, both 
high Conservatives, should enter into a conspiracy together 
Those gentlemen would be themselves astonished at the impu- 
tation. Suppose them to be both members of the Conservative 
xissociation ; would that circumstance be sufficient to sustain, 
in the judgment of men of plain sense, the charge of conspi- 
racy upon them ? Gentlemen, the relation in which Mr. Duffy- 
Mr. Barrett, and Dr. Gray stood to the Repeal Association, is 



lEISH STATE TRIALS. 335 

exactly the same as tliat in which Mr. Staunton, the proprie- 
tor of the Weekly Register, stood toward the Catholic Associa- 
tion. He was paid for his advertisements, and his newspaper 
contained Emancipation news, and was sent to those who de- 
sired to receive it. Mr. Staunton is now a member of the 
Repeal Association ; he will tell you that his connection with 
that body is precisely of the same character as that which ex- 
isted with the celebrated body to which I referred ; he will 
prove to you, that over his paper Mr. O'Connell exercises no 
sort of control, and that all that is done by him in reference 
to his paper is the result of his own free and unbiassed will. 
The speeches made at the Association and public meetings 
were reported by him in the same manner as in the other 
pubhc journals ; he is not a conspirator ; the government have 
not treated him as such. Why ? Because there were no poems 
in his paper like " The Memory of the Dead," which, although 
in direct opposition to the feelings of Mr. O'Connell, and which 
he had frequently expressed, is now used in evidence against 
him. 

Gentlemen, I have said enough to you to show how formid- 
able is this doctrine of conspiracy — of legal conspiracy — which 
is so far removed from all notions of actual conspiracy, to 
show you further how cautious you ought to be in finding 
eight of your fellow-citizens guilty of that charge. The defend- 
ants are indicted for conspiracy, and for nothing else. No 
counts are inserted for attending unlawful assemblies. The 
Attorney-General wants a conviction for a conspiracy, and 
nothing else. He has deviated in these particulars from Eng- 
hsh usage. 

In indictments for a conspiracy, counts for attending unlaw- 
ful assembhes are in England uniformly introduced. English 
juries have almost imiformly manifested an aversion to find 
men guilty of a conspiracy. Take Henry Hunt's case as an 
example. When that case was tried, England was in a peril- 
ous condition. It had been proved before a secret committee 
of the House of Commons, of which the present Earl of Derby, 
the father of Lord Stanley, was the chairman, that large 
bodies of men were disciplined at night in the neighborhood 
of Manchester, and made familiar with the use of arms. Au 



33G SELECT SPEECHES OF PJCHMID LXLOU SHEIL. 

extensive organization existed. Vast public assemblies were 
held, accompanied with every revolutionary incident in fur- 
therance of a revolutionary object — yet, an English jury would 
not find Henry Hunt guilty of a conspiracy, but found him 
guilty, on the fourth count of the indictment, for attending an 
unlawful assembly. Some of the Chartists were not found 
guilty of a conspiracy, but were found guilty upon counts from 
which the word " conspiracy " is left out. Gentlemen, the 
promises of Mr. Pitt, when the Union was carried, have not 
been fulfilled — the prospects presented by him in his magnifi- 
cent declamation have not been reahzed ; but, if in so many 
other regards we have sustained a most giievous disappoint- 
ment — if English capital has not adventured here — if Enghsh- 
men have preferred sinking their fortunes in the rocks of 
Mexico rather than embark them in speculations connected 
with this fine but unfortunate country — yet, from the Union 
let one advantage be at all events derived : let Enghsh feel- 
ings — let Enghsh principles — let Enghsh love of justice — let 
English horror of oppression — let Enghsh detestation of foul 
play — ^let English loathing of constructive crime, find its way 
amongst us ! But, thank God, it is not to England that I 
am driven exclusively to refer for a salutary example of the 
aversion of twelve honest men to prosecutions for conspirac}- . 
You remember the prosecution of Forbes, and of Hand- 
wich, and other Orangemen of an inferior class, under Lord 
Wellesley's administration ; they were guilty of a riot in the 
theatre; but they were charged with having entered into a 
great political confederacy to upset Lord Wellesley's govern- 
ment, and to associate him with the " exports of Lreland." 
The Protestant feeling of Ireland rose — addresses were poured 
in from almost every district in the country, remonstrating 
against a proceeding which was represented as hostile to the 
hberties of the country, and as a great stretch of the preroga- 
tive of the crown. The jury did thek duty, and refused to 
convict the traversers. The Irish Cathohcs at that time, 
heated by feelings of partisansliip, were rash enough to wish 
for a conviction. Fatal mistake ! A precedent would have 
been created, wliich would soon have been converted into 
practice against themselves. 



lEISH STATE TRIALS. 337 

Gentlemen, we are living in times of strange political vicis- 
situde. God forbid that I should ever hve to see the time — 
(for I hate to see ascendency of every kind) — God forbid that 
I should ever live to see the time, or that our children should 
ever live to see the time, when there shall be arrayed four 
Catholic judges at a trial at bar upon that bench, when the 
entire of the government bar who shall be engaged in a public 
prosecution shall be Roman Catholic ; and when a Cathohc 
Crown solicitor shall strike eleven Protestants from the special 
jury hst, and leave twelve Eoman Cathohcs in that box. I 
reassert it, and exclaim again, in all the sincerity of my heart, 
that I pray that such a spectacle never shall be exhibited in 
this the first criminal court in the land. I know full well the 
irrepressible tendency of the power to abuse. We have wit- 
nessed strange things, and strange things we may yet behold. 
It is the duty, the solemn duty — it is the interest, the para- 
mount interest — of every one of us, before and above every- 
thing else, to secure the great foundations of hberty — in which 
we all have an equal concern — ^from invasion, and to guard 
against the creation of a precedent which may enable some 
future Attorney-General to convert the Queen's Bench into a 
star-chamber, and commit a further inroad upon the principles 
of the constitution. Gentlemen, it is my intention to show 
you that my client is not guilty of any of the conspiracies 
charged in the indictment ; and in doing so I shall have oc- 
casion to advert to the several proceedings that have been 
adopted by the government, and to the evidence that has been 
laid before you. 

But before I proceed to that head of the division which I 
have traced out for myself, I shall show you what the object 
of my client really was ; I shall show you that that object 
was a legal one, and that it was by legal means that he en- 
deavored to attain it. The Attorney-General, in a speech of 
considerable length — but not longer than the greatness of the 
occasion amply justified — adverted to a great number of di- 
versified topics, quoted the speeches of Sir Eobert Peel and 
of Lord John Bussell — adverted to the report of the secret 
committee of the House of Lords in 1797, and referred to the 
great era of Irish parHamentary independence, 1782, That 



338 SELECT SPEECHES OF EICHARD LALOK SHEEL. 

lie should have been so multifarious and discursive, I do not 
complain. In a case of this incalculable importance we 
should look for light wherever it can be found. I shall go 
somewhat farther than the year 1782 ; but do not imagine 
that I mean to enter into any lengthened narrative or elabor- 
ate expatiation. Long tracts of time may be swiftly traversed. 

I do not think that any writer has given a more accurate or 
more interesting account of the first struggle of Ireland for 
the assei-tion of her rights than Sir Walter Scott. He was a 
Tory. He was bred and born, perhaps, in some disrehsh for 
Ireland ; but when he came amongst us, his opinions under- 
went a material alteration. The man who could speak of 
Scotland in those noble lines which were cited in the course 
of this trial, with so much passionate attachment, made a just 
allowance for those who felt for the land of their birth the 
same just emotion. In his Life of Swift, he says Molyneux, 
the friend of Locke and of hberty, published in 1698 " The 
Case of Ireland being bound by Act of Parhament in England, 
Stated," in which he showed with great force, " that the right 
of legislation, of which England made so oppressive a use, 
was justifiable neither by the plea of conquest, purchase, or 
precedent, and was only submitted to from incapacity of efiect- 
ual resistance. 

" The temper of the English House of Commons did not 
brook these remonstrances. It was unanimously voted that 
these bold and pernicious assertions were calculated to shake 
the subordination and dependence of Ireland, as united and 
annexed forever to the Crown of England, and the vote of the 
House was followed by an address to the Queen, complaining 
that although the woolen trade was the staple manufacture 
of England, over which her legislation was accustomed to 
watch with the utmost care, yet Ireland, which was dependent 
upon and protected by England, not contented with the linen 
manufacture, the hberty whereof was indulged to her, pre- 
sumed also to apply her credit and capital to the weaving of 
her own wool and woolen cloths, to the great detriment of 
England. Not a voice was raised in the British House of 
Commons to contradict maxims equally impohtic and tyranni- 
cal. In acting upon these commercial restrictions, wrong 



TEISH STATE TRIALS. 339 

was heaped upon wrong, and insult was added to injury — 
with this advantage on the side of the aggressors, that they 
could intimidate the people of Ireland into silence by raising, 
to drown every complaint, the cry of ' rebel,' and ' Jacobite.' " 
When Swift came to Ireland in 1714, he at first devoted 
himself to literary occupations ; but at length his indignation 
was aroused by the monstrous wrongs which were inflicted 
upon his country. He was so excited by the injustice which 
he abhorred, that he could not forbear exclaiming to his friend 
Delany, " Do not the villanies of men eat into your flesh ? " 
In 1720 he published a proposal for the use of Irish manu- 
facture, and was charged with having endeavored to create 
hostility between different classes of his Majesty's subjects, 
one of the charges preferred in this very indictment. At that 
time the judges were dependent upon the Crown. They did 
not possess that " fixity of tenure " which is a security for their 
public virtue. They are now no longer, thank God, " tenants 
at will." They may be mistaken — they may be bhnded by 
strong emotions — ^but corrupt they cannot be. The circum- 
stance detailed in the following passage in the Life of Swift 
could not by possibilit}'' occur in modern times. " The storm 
which Swift had driven was not long in bursting. It was 
intimated to Lord Chief Justice Whitshed by a person in 
great ojBfice," (this, if I remember right, was the expression 
used by Mr. Ross, in reference to a great unkno\\m, who sent 
him here,) " that Swift's pamphlet was published for the pur- 
pose of setting the two kingdoms at variance ; and it was 
recommended that the printer should be prosecuted with the 
uttermost rigor. Whitshed was not a person to neglect such 
a hint, and the arguments of government were so successful 
that the grand juries of the county and city presented the 
dean's pamphlet as a seditious, factious, and virulent Hbel. 
Waters, the printer, was seized and forced to give great bail ; 
but, upon his trial, the jury, though some pains had been 
bestowed in selecting them, brought him in not guilty ; and it 
was not until they were, worn out by the Lord Chief Justice, 
who detained them eleven hours, and sent them nine times to 
reconsider their verdict, that they at length reluctantly left the 
matter in his hands, by a special verdict ; but the measures of 



340 SELECT SPEECHES OF KICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 

Wliitshed were too violent to be of service to the government ; 
men's minds revolted against his iniquitous conduct." 

Sir Walter Scott then proceeds to give an account of the 
famous Drapier's Letters. After speaking of the first three, 
Sh Walter Scott says, " It was now obvious, from the temj)er 
of Ii'eland, that the true point of difference between the two 
countries might safely be brought before the pubhc. In the 
Drapier's fourth letter, accordingly. Swift boldly treated of the 
royal prerogative, of the almost exclusive employment of na- 
tives of England in places of trust and emolument in Ireland ; 
of the dependence of that kingdom upon England, and the 
power assumed, contrary to truth, reason, and justice, of blad- 
ing her by the laws of a parhament in which she had no repre- 
sentation." And, gentlemen, is it a question too bold of me 
to ask, whether, if Ireland have no effective representation — if 
the wishes and feelings of the representatives of Ireland upon 
Irish questions are held to be of no account — ii the Irish re- 
presentation is. utterly merged in the EngUsh, and the minister 
does not, by a judicious pohcy, endeavor to counteract it — as 
he might, in the opinion of many men, effectually do — is not 
the practical result exactly the same as if Ireland had not a 
single representative in parliament? Gentlemen, Swift ad- 
dressed the people of Ireland upon this great topic, in lan- 
guage as strong as any that Daniel O'Conneh has employed. 

" The remedy," he says, " is wholly m your own hands 

By the laws of God, of nations, and of your country, you are, 
and ought to be, as free a ^Deople as your brethren in Eng- 
land." "This tract," says Sh Walter Scott, "pressed at once 
upon the real merits of the question at issue, and the alarm 
was instantly taken by the Enghsh government, the necessity 
of supporting whose domination devolved upon Carteret, who 
was just landed, and accordingly a proclamation was issued, 
offering £300 reward for the discovery of the author of the Dra- 
pier's fourth letter, described as a wicked and malicious 
pamphlet, containing several seditious and scandalous pas- 
sages, highly reflecting upon his Majesty and his ministers, 
and tending to alienate the affections of his good subjects in 
England and Ireland from each other." Sir Walter, after 
mentioning one or two interesting anecdotes, says — " When 



IRISH STATE TRIALS. 341 

the bill against tlie printer of the Drapier's Letters was about 
to be presented to the grand jury, Swift addressed to that 
body a paper entitled ' Seasonable Advice,' exhorting them to 
remember the story of the Leyone mode by which the wolves 
were placed with the sheep on condition of parting with their 
shepherds and mastiffs, after which they ravaged the flock at 
pleasure." 

A few spuited verses, addressed to the citizens at large, and 
enforcing similar topics, are subscribed by the Drapier ini- 
tials, and are doubtless Swift's own composition, alluding to 
the charge that he had gone too far in leaving the discussion 
of "Wood's project, to treat of the alleged dependence of Ire- 
land. He concludes in these lines : 

" If then, oijpression has not quite subdued 
At once your prudence and your gratitude — 
If you yourselves conspire not your undoing — 
And don't deserve, and won't bring down your ruin — 
If yet to virtue you have some pretence — 
If yet you are not lost to common sense. 
Assist your patriots in your own defence ; 
That stupid cant, ' he went too far,' despise, 
And know that to be brave is to be wise ; 
Think how he struggled for your hberty. 
And give him freedom while yourselves are free." 
At the same time was circulated the memorable and apt quota- 
tion from Scripture, by a Quaker (I do not know, gentlemen, 
whether his name was Eobinson, but it ought to have been) — 
" And the people said unto Saul, shall Jonathan die, who hath 
wrought this great salvation in Israel ? God forbid ! As the 
Lord liveth, there shah not one hair of his head fall to the 
ground, for he hath wrought with God this day ; so the people 
rescued Jonathan, and he died not." 

Thus admonished by verse, law, and Scripture, the grand 
jury assembled. It was in vain that the Lord Chief Justice 
"Whitshed, who had denounced the dean's former tract as sedi- 
tious, and procured a verdict against the prisoner, exerted 
"himself upon a similar occasion. The hour for intimidation 
was past. Sir Walter Scott, after detailing instances of the 
violence of Whitshed, and describing the rest of the dean's 
letters, says : " Thus victoriously terminated the first grand 



342 SELECT SPEECHES OF EICHAED LALOE SHEIL. 

struggle for the independence of Ireland. The eyes of the 
kingdom were now moved with one consent upon the man by 
whose unbending fortitude and pre-eminent talent this triumph 
was accomplished. The Drapier's head became a sign ; his 
portrait was engraved, worn upon handkerchiefs, struck upon 
medals, and displayed in every possible manner as the Libera- 
tor of Ireland." 

"Well might that epithet " gTand," be apphed to the first 
great struggle of the people of Ireland by that immortal 
Scotchman, who was himseK so " grand of soul," and who of 
mental loftiness, as well as of the magnificence of external 
nature, had a perception so fine — and well might our own 
G-rattan, who was so great and so good, in referring to his 
own achievement in 1782, address to the spirit of Swift and to 
the spirit of Molyneux his enthusiastic invocation — and may 
not I, in such a cause as this, without irreverence, offer up 
my prayer, that of the spmt by which the soul of Henry Grat- 
tan was itself inflamed, every remnant in the bosoms of my 
countrymen may not be extinguished. A prosecution was not 
instituted against the great conspirators of 1782. The Enghsh 
minister had been taught in the struggles between England 
and her colonies a lesson from adversity, that school-mistress, 
the only one from whom ministers ever learn anything — who 
charges so much blood, so much gold, and such torrents of 
tears, for her instructions. 

In reading the history of that time, and in tracing the 
gradual descent of England from the tone of despotic dicta- 
tion to the reluctant acknowledgment of disaster, and to the 
ignominious confession of defeat, how many painful considera- 
tions are presented to us ! If in time — if the Enghsh minister 
in time had listened to the eloquent warnings of Chatham, or 
to the still more oracular admonitions of Edmund Burke, what 
a world of woe would have been avoided ! 

By some fatality, England was fii'st demented, and then was 
lost. Her repentance followed her perdition. The colonies 
were lost ; but Ireland was saved by the timely recognition of 
the great principle on which her independence was founded. 
1^0 Attorney-General was found bold enough to prosecute 
Flood and Grattan for a conspu-acy. With what scorn would 



lEISH STATE TRIALS. 343 

twelve Irishimen have repudiated tlie presumptuous function- 
ary by wliom sucli an enterprise sliould have been attempted. 
Irishmen then felt that they had a country ; they acted under 
the influence of that instinct of nationahty, which, for his prov- 
idential purposes, the Author of nature has implanted in us. 
We were then a nation — we were not broken into fragments 
by those dissensions by which we are at once enfeebled and 
degraded. If we were eight millions of Protestants (and, 
heaven forgive me, there are moments when, looking at the 
wrongs done to my country, I have been betrayed into the 
guilty desire that we all were) ; but, if we were eight milhons 
of Protestants, should we be used as we are ? Should we see 
every office of dignity and emolument in this country filled by 
the natives of the sister island ? Should we see the just ex- 
penditure requisite for the improvement of our country denied ? 
Should we see the quit and crown rents of Ireland applied to 
the improvement of Charing-Cross, or of Windsor Castle ? 
Should we submit to the odious distinctions between Enghsh- 
men and Irishmen introduced into almost every act of legisla- 
tion ? Should we bear with an Arms BiU, by which the BiU 
of Bights is set at naught ? Should we brook the misapplica- 
tion of a Poor Law ? Should we allow the parliament to pro- 
ceed as if we had not a voice in the legislature ? Should we 
submit to our present inadequate representation ? Should we 
allow a new tariff to be introduced, without giving us the 
slightest equivalent for the manifest loss we have sustained ? 
And should we not peremptorily require that the Imperial 
Parliament should hold a periodical session for the transaction 
of Irish business in the metropolis of a powerful, and, as it 
then would be, an undivided country ? But we are prevented 
by our wretched religious distinctions from co-operating for a 
single object, by which the honor and substantial interests of 
our country can be promoted. 

Fatal, disastrous, detestable distinctions ! Detestable, be- 
cause they are not only repugnant to the genuine spirit of 
Christianity, and substitute for the charities of rehgion the 
rancorous antipathies of sect ; but because they practically 
reduce us to a colonial dependency, make the Union a name, 
substitute for a real union a tie of parchment which an event 



344 SELECT SPEECHES OF RICHARD LALOR SHEEL. 

might sunder — convert a nation into an appurtenance, make 
us the footstool of the minister, the scorn of England, and the 
commiseration of the world. Ireland is the only country in 
Europe in which abominable distinctions between Protestant 
and Cathohc are permitted to continue. In Germany, where 
Luther translated the Scriptures ; in France, where Calvin 
wrote the Institutes ; ay, in the land of the Dragonades and 
the St. Bartholomews ; in the land from whence the forefathers 
of one of the judicial functionaries of this court, and the first 
ministerial officer of the court were barbarously driven — the 
mutual wrongs done by Cathohc and Protestant are forgiven 
and forgotten, while we, madmen that we are, arrayed by that 
fell fanaticism which, driven from every other country in 
Europe, has found a refuge here, precipitate ourselves upon 
each other in those encounters of sectarian ferocity in which 
our country, bleeding and lacerated, is trodden under foot. We 
convert the island, that ought to be one of the most fortunate 
in the sea, into a receptacle of degradation and suffering ; coun- 
teract the designs of Providence, and enter into a conspiracy 
for the frustration of the beneficent designs of God. (Great ap- 
plause and clapping of hands in court for some minutes.) 

Chief Justice. — If pubhc feeling is exhibited again in this 
manner, or if the proceedings of the court are again inter- 
rupted, I must order the galleries to be cleared. (Addressing 
Mr. Shell) — I am sure, Mr, Shell, you do not wish it yourself. 

Mr. Sheil. — There is nothing I deprecate more, my lord ; 
for it is not by such means that the minds of the jury are to 
be convinced. 

Chief Justice. — Certainly not. 

Mr. Sheil. — ^I am much obKged to your lordship for inter- 
rupting me, as it has given me a few moments' rest. 

Chief Justice. — Whenever you feel exhausted, sit down and 
rest. 

The right honorable gentleman thanked his lordship and 
resumed his address. It is indisputable that Ireland made a 
progress marvellously rapid in the career of improvement 
which freedom had thrown open to her ; she ran so fast that 
England was afraid of being overtaken. Mr. Pitt and Mr. 
Dundas concurred in stating that no country had ever ad- 



lEISH STATE TRIALS. 345 

vanced with more rapidity than Ireland. Her commerce and 
manufactures doubled ; the plough climbed to the top of the 
mountain, and found its way into the centre of the morass. 
This city grew into one of the noblest capitals of the world — 
wealth, and rank, and genius, and eloquence, and every intel- 
lectual accompHshment, and all the attributes by which men's 
minds are exalted, refined, and embelhshed, were gathered 
here. The memorials of our prosperity remain. Of that 
prosperity architecture has left us its magnificent attestation. 
This temple, dedicated to justice, stands among the witnesses, 
silent and solemn, of the glory of Ireland, to which I may ap- 
peal. It is seen from afar off. It rises high above the smoke 
and din of this populous city ; be it the type of that moral 
elevation, over every contaminating influence, to which every 
man who is engaged in the sacred administration of justice 
ought to ascend ! 

The penal laws were enacted by slaves and relaxed by free- 
men. The Protestants of Ireland had been contented to kneel 
to England upon the CathoHc neck. They rose to a nobler 
attitude, and we were permitted to get up. In 1782, the 
Protestants of Ireland who had acquired pohtical rights, com- 
municated civil privileges to their fellow-subjects. In 1792 
they granted us the elective franchise — a w^ord of illustrious 
etymology. There can be no doubt that the final adjustment 
of the Catholic question upon terms satisfactory to both par- 
ties would have been effected, and without putting the coum- 
try to that process of fearful agitation through which it has 
passed, if the rebellion of 1798, so repeatedly and with a sin- 
cerity so unaffected denounced by Mr. O'Connell, had not 
marred the hopes of the country and essentially contributed 
to the Union. 

Mr. Pitt borrowed his plan of the Union from that great sol- 
dier to whom the gentry of this country are under obhgations 
so essential. It must be acknowledged, however, that they 
make up by the fervor of their loyalty for the repubhcan 
origin of their estates. Ohver CromweU first devised the 
Union. He returned four hundred members for England, 
thirty for Scotland, and as many for this coimtry ; a report of 
the debates iu that singular assembly was preserved by 



346 SELECT SPEECHES OF EICHAKD LALOR SHEIL. 

Tliomas Burton, wlio kept a diary, and is stated in that book, 
wliich I hold in my hand, to have been a member of the par- 
haments of Ohver and Richard Cromwell, from 1656 to 1659. 
It was pubUshed a few years ago from a MS. in the British 
Museum. 

The members from Ireland were Enghsh soldiers, who had 
acquhed estates ia Ireland. You would suppose that they 
were cordially welcomed by their Enghsh associates, for they 
were Enghshmen, bred and born ; and they had very materiaUy 
contributed to the tranquiUization of Ireland. I hope I use 
the most delicate and least offensive term. I acknowledge 
that I had anticipated as much before I read the book. What 
was my surprise when I found that these deputies from Ire- 
land were considered to be in some sort contamiaated by the 
ak which they had breathed in this coimtry, and that they were 
most uncourteously treated by the Enghsh members. A gen- 
tleman whose name ought to have been Copley, (the family 
name of Lord Lyndhurst,) says, " These men are foreigners." 
The folio whig is the speech : " Mr. Gewen said, it is not for 
the honor of the Enghsh nation for foreigners to come and 
have power in this nation. They are but provinces at best." 

Doctor Clarges says, on behalf of Ireland, page 114, " They 
(the Irish) were united with you, and have always had an 
equal right with you. He that was King of England was 
King of Ireland, or Lord. If you give not a right to sit here, 
you must in justice let them have a parhament at home. How 
safe that will be, I question. Those that sit for them are not 
Irish teagues ; but faithful persons." Mr. Gewen again ob- 
serves : "It were better both for England and for Ireland that 
they had parhaments of tlieir own. It is neither safe, just, nor 
honorable to admit them. Let them rather have a parhament 
of their own." Mr. Antie observes : " If you speak as to the 
convenience in relation to England, much more is to be said 
why those who serve for Scotland should sit here. It is one 
eontiuent, and elections are easier determined ; but L-eland dif- 
fers. It is much fitter for them to have parhaments of their own. 
That was the old constitution. It will be difficult to change 
it, and dangerous for Ireland. They are under an impossibihty 
of redress. . . . Their grievances can never be redressed. 



lEISH STATE TEIALS. 347 

Elections can never be intermixed. Tliongli they were but a 
province, tliere were courts of justice and parliaments as free 
as here. ... I pray that they may have soon to hear 
their grievances in their own nation, seeing that they cannot 
have them heard there." 

Sir Thomas Stanly observes : " I am not to speak for 

Ireland, but for the Enghsh in Ireland The 

members for Ireland and the electors are all Enghshmen, 
who naturally claim to have votes in making laws by which 
they must be governed; they have fought your battles, ob- 
tained and preserved your interests, designed by the famous 
long parliament, obtained by blood, and sought for by prayer 
solemnly." 

You may ask of me, wherefore is it I make these references ? 
I answer, because the institutions of a country may change ; 
the government may, in its form, undergo essential modifica- 
tions ; but the basis of the national character, like its language, 
remains the same, and to this very day there prevails in the 
feelings of Enghshmen towards this country what I have ven- 
tured to call elsewhere — the instinct of domination. Towards 
the Protestants of Ireland, when the Papists were ground to 
powder, the very same feeling prevailed, of which we see 
manifestations to this hour. The question is not one between 
Cathohc and Protestant ; but is between the greater country 
and the smaller, which the former country endeavors to keep 
under an ignominious control. The Union was carried by 
corruption and by fear. The shrieks of the rebeUion still 
echoed in the nation's ear. The habeas corpus act was sus- 
pended, and martial law had been proclaimed ; the country 
was in a state of siege ; the minister had a rod of steel for the 
people ; and a purse of countless gold for the senator. 

But in the midst of that parhamentary profligacy, at which 
even Sir Robert Walpole would have been astonished, the 
genius of the country remained incorruptible — Grattan, Curran, 
and the rest of those famous men whose names cast so bright 
a hght upon this, the brightest part of our history, never for 
a moment yielded to a sordid or ignoble impulse. All the 
distinguished men of the bar were faithful to their country. 
Sir Jonah Barrington, in his History of the Rise and FaU of 



348 SELECT SPEECHES OF RICHARD LALOR SHELL. 

the Irish Nation, has quoted the speeches of the most eminent 
men of our profession ; amongst which those of Mr. Goold, 
who argued the question of right with equal eloquence and 
subtlety, Mr. Joj, Mr. Plunket, Mr. Bushe, and Mr. Saurin, are 
conspicuous. Lord Plunket denied the right of parhament to 
destroy itself. Mr. Sauiin appealed to the authority of Mr. 
Locke. The same course was taken by Mr. Bushe, whom we 
have lost so lately — Bushe, whom it was impossible for those 
by whom the noblest eloquence was justly prized, not to ad- 
mu-e — whom it was impossible for those by whom the purest 
worth was justly estimated, not to reverence — and whom it was 
impossible for those by whom a generous and exalted nature 
could be appreciated, not to love. 

The Attorney- General has stated that the opinions of these 
eminent persons, delivered at the time of the Union, ought to 
be held in no account. What reason did he give for not at- 
taching any value to the authority of Mr. Saurin ? He said 
Mr. Saurin expressed his opinions in mere debate. So that 
the most important principles, solemnly laid down in parHa- 
mentary debate, are to be regarded as httle better than mere 
forensic asseveration. I can now account for some speeches 
which I heard in the House of Commons regarding the edu- 
cation question. I think, however, that if such doctrines be 
propounded in the House of Commons itself, they would be 
listened to with surprise. You have heard, gentlemen, in the 
course of this trial, something of the morality of war, and also 
something of the morality of rebellion, which the right honor- 
able gentleman was pleased to substitute as a synonym for 
war ; but of the morality of parliament, I trust you will not 
form an estimate from the specimen presented to you by her 
Majesty's Attorney-General. 

But these opinions, Mr. Attorney-General observed, were 
expressed before the act of parliament was passed. Surely, 
the truth of great principles does not depend upon an act of 
parhament. They are not for an age, but for all time. They 
are immutable and imperishable. They are immortal as the 
mind of man, incapable of decomposition or decay. The 
question before you is not w^hether these principles are well 
or ill founded, but you must take the fact of their having been 



IRISH STATE TEIALS. 349 

inculcated into your consideration, where you have to deter- 
mine the intent of the men upon whose motives you have to 
adjudicate. The great authority to which the traversers ap- 
peal gives them a right, to a political toleration upon your 
part, and should induce you to think that even if they were led 
astray they were led astray by the authority of«men with whom 
surely it is no discredit to coincide. But whatever we may 
think of the abstract vaHdity of the Union, you must bear in 
mind that Mr. O'ConneU has again and again stated, that the 
Union, being law, must, as long as it remains law, be submitted 
to ; and aU his positions regarding the vaUdity of the Union 
have no other object than the constitutional incitement of the 
people to adopt the most effectual means through which the 
law itself may be repealed or modified. The Union was a bar- 
gain and sale — as a sale it was profligate, and the bargain was 
a bad one — for better terms might have been obtained, and may 
be still obtained, if you do not become the auxiharies of the 
Attorney-General. Two-thirds of the Irish parhament were 
suppressed. Not a single English member was abstracted; and 
there can be no doubt we stood immediately after the Union in 
such a relation towards the Enghsh members, that we became 
completely nullified in the House of Commons. But, gentle- 
raen, one could, perhaps, be reconciled to the terms of the Union, 
bad as they were, if the results of the Union had been benefi- 
cial to this country. We are told by some that our manufac- 
tures and our agricultural produce has greatly augmented ; 
but what is the condition of the great bulk of the people of 
the country ? Which is, after all, the consideration that, with 
Christian statesmen, ought to weigh the most. The greatest 
happiness of the greatest number is a Benthamite antithesis ; 
but there is a great deal of Christianity condensed in it. 

When travellers from France, from Germany, from America 
arrive in this country, and contemplate the frightful spectacle 
presented by the misery of the people, although previously 
prepared by descriptions of the national misery, they stand 
aghast at what they see, but what they could not have im- 
agined. Why is this ? If we look at other countries and find 
the people in a miserable condition we attribute the fault to 
the government. Are we in Ireland to attribute it to the soO, 



350 SELECT SPEECHES OF EICHAED LALOR SHEIL. 

to the climate, or to some evil genius who exercises a sinister 
influence over our destinies ? The fault, as it appears to me, 
is entirely in that system of pohcy which has been pursued by 
the Imperial parhament, and for which the Union is to be 
condemned. Let me see, gentlemen, whether I can make out 
my case. I shall go through the leading facts with great 
celerity ; but in such a case as this I should not apprehend the 
imputation of being wantonly prolix. 

Your time is, indeed, most valuable, but the interests at 
stake are inestimably precious ; and time will be scarce noted 
by you when you bear in mind that the effects of your verdict 
will be felt when generations have passed away — when every 
heart that now throbs in this great assembly shall have ceased 
to palpitate — when the contentions by which we were once agi- 
tated shall touch us no further ; and all of us. Catholic and 
Protestant, Whig and Tory, Eadical and Repealer, and Con- 
servative, shall have been gathered where all at last lie down 
in peace together. The first measures adopted by the Impe- 
rial parliament were a continuation of martial law, and an ex- 
tended suspension of the habeas corpus act. Mr. Pitt was 
honestly anxious to carry Catholic Emancipation, and to make 
at the same time a provision for the Poman Cathohc clergy. 

You may — some of you may — perhaps, think that Cathohc 
Emancipation ought never to have been carried ; but if it was 
to be carried, how much wiser would it have been to have set- 
tled it forty -four years ago, and without putting the country 
through that ordeal of excitement through which the Imperial 
parliament, by the procrastination of justice, forced it to pass. 
Mr. Pitt, by transferring the Catholic question from the Irish 
to the Imperial parliament;, destroyed his own administration, 
and furnished a proof that, in place of being able to place 
Ireland under the protection of his great genius, he placed 
her under the control of the strong religious prejudices of the 
English people. Mr. Pitt returned to the first place in the 
ministry without, however, being able to make any stipulations 
for the fulfillment of his own engagements, or the realization 
of the policy which he felt to be indispensable for the peace 
of Ireland. The Eoman Catholic Question was brought for- 
ward in 1805, and was lost in an Imperial House of Commons. 



lEISH STATE TRIALS. 351 

Mr. Pitt died of the battle of xiusterlitz, and was succeeded 
by the "Whigs. They proposed a measure which the Tories, 
who drove them out on the " No Popery " cry, carried in 
1816, and who then introduced the new doctrine, that the use- 
fulness of public measures is to be tried far less by the prin- 
ciples on which they were founded, than by the parties by 
which they were accomphshed. 

The expulsion of the Whigs from office in 1806, may, in 
your judgment, have been a fortunate proceeding ; but for- 
tunate or unfortunate, it furnishes another proof that the 
government of Ireland had been made over, not so much to 
the parliament as to the great mass of the people by whom 
that parliament is held under control. The Tories found in 
the portfolio of the Whigs two measures ; a draft bill for 
Catholic Emancipation, which the Duke of Wellington, then 
Sir Arthur Wellesley, the Secretary for Ireland, flung into the 
fire; and an Arms Bill, to which clauses have been recently 
added, which even Mr. Shaw declared were " wantonly severe." 
You may conceive that an Arms BiU, with aE its molestations, 
may be required ; but it is beyond question that, in the year 
L819, when England was on the verge of a rebeUion, no such 
bill was ever propounded by the British ministry ; and grant- 
ing, for a moment, for the sake of argument, that some such 
bill is requisite, how scandalously must a country have been 
governed for almost half a century, if this outrage upon the 
Bill of Bights be required ! 

Having passed the Arms Bill and the Insurrection Act, its 
appropriate adjunct, the Imperial parHament proceeded to re- 
duce the allowance to Maynooth. There is but one opinion 
regarding Maynooth — that it should be totally suppressed, or 
largely and munificently endowed, and that an education 
should be given to the Koman Cathohc clergy, such as a body 
exercising such vast influence ought to receive. There are 
some who think it were better that the Catholic clergy were 
educated in France. I do not wish to see a Gallo-Hibernian 
church in Ireland. Parisian manners may be acquired at the 
cost of Irish morality, and I own that I am too much attached 
to my sovereign, and to the connexion of my country with 
England, to desire that conductors of French ambition, that 



352 SELECT SPEECHES OF RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 

instruments of Frencli enterprise, that agents of Frencli in- 
trigue, should be located in every parochial sub-division of the 
country. State to an English conservative the importance of 
opening a career for intellectual exertion, by holding out 
prizes to genius at Maynooth, and he will say it is true ; but 
the English government are unable to carry the measure. 
Why ? Because the rehgious objections of the people of Eng- 
land are in the way. 

Another of the results of the Legislative Union. In 1810, a 
decade since the Union had elapsed, the country was in a mis- 
erable condition — its destitution, its degradation, were univer- 
sally felt, and by none more than the Protestants of Dublin. A 
requisition was addressed to the High Sheriff of the city, signed 
by men of the greatest weight and consideration amongst us. 
A meeting was called ; Sir James Kiddie was in the chair. 
At that meeting Mr. O'Connell attended. He had in 1800 
made his first speech against the Union, and in 1810, he came 
forward to denoimce that measure. The speech delivered by 
him on that occasion was precisely similar to those numerous 
and most powerful harangues which have been read to you. 
He is represented in 1844 by her Majesty's Attorney-General as 
influenced by the most guilty and the most unworthy motives. 
The people are to be arrayed, in order that at a signal they 
may rise, and that a sanguinary republic should be established, 
of which Daniel O'Connell is to be the head. If these are 
the objects in 1844, what were the objects in 1810 ? The same 
arguments, the same topics of declamation, the same vehe- 
ment adjurations, are employed. Gentlemen of the jury, that 
speech will be read to you ; I entreat of you to take it into your 
box — to compare it with the speeches read on behalf of the 
Crown, and by that comparison to determine the course which 
you ought to take when the liberty of your fellow-subject is 
to depend upon your judgment. I am too wearied at present 
to read that sj^eech ; but with the permission of the Court, I 
will call on Mr. Ford to read it. 

Chief Justice. — Certainly. 

Judge Perrin. — ^Whe're did the meeting at which that 
speech was spoken take place ? 

Mr. Sheil. — At the Eoyal Exchange. 



IRISH STATE TRIALS. 353 

Mr. Ford then read the following speech : 

" Mr. O'Connell declared that lie offered himself to the meeting with 
unfeigned diffidence. He was unable to do justice to his feelings, on 
the great national subject on which they had met. 

He felt too much of personal anxiety to allow him to arrange in any- 
thing like order, the many topics which rushed upon his mind, now, 
that, after ten years of silence and torpor. Irishmen again began to recol- 
lect their enslaved coimtry. It was a melancholy period, those ten years, 
a period in which Ireland saw her artificers starved — her tradesmen beg- 
ging — her merchants become banki-upts — her gentry banished — her no- 
bility degraded. Within that period domestic turbulence broke from 
day to day into open violence and murder. Beligious dissensions were 
aggravated and embittered. Credit and commerce were annihilated — 
taxation augmented in amount and in vexation. Besides the " hangings 
off " of the ordinary assizes, we had been disgraced by the necessity that 
existed for holding two special commissions of death, and had been de- 
graded by one rebellion — and to crown all, we were at length insulted by 
being told of our growing prosperity. This was not the painting of im- 
agination — ^it borrowed nothing from fancy. It was, alas ! the plain rep- 
resentation of the facts that had occurred. The picture in sober colors 
of the real state of his ill-fated country. There was not a man present 
but must be convinced that he did not exaggerate a single fact. There 
was not a man present but must know that more misery existed than he 
had described. 

" Such being the history of the first ten years of the Union, it would 
not be difficult to convince any unprejudiced man that all those calami- 
ties had sprung from that measure ; Ireland was favored by Providence 
with a fertile soil, an excellent situation for commerce, intersected by 
navigable rivers, indented at every side with safe and commodious har- 
bors, blessed with a fruitful soil, and with a vigorous, hardy, generous, 
and brave population ; how did it happen-, then, that the noble qualities 
of the Irish people were perverted ? that the order of Providence was 
disturbed, and its blessings worse than neglected ? The fatal cause was 
obvious— it was the Union. That those deplorable effects would follow 
from that accursed measure was prophesied. Before the Act of Union 
passed, it had been already proved that the trade of the country and its 
credit must fail as capital was drawn from it — that turbulence and vio- 
lence would increase when the gentry were removed to reside in another 
country — that the taxes should increase in the same proportion as the 
people became unable to pay them ! 

' ' But neither the arguments nor the prophetic fears have ended with 
our present evils. It has also been demonstrated, that as long as the 
Union continues, so long must our evils accumulate. The nature of that 
measure, and the experience of facts which we have now had, leave no 
doubt of the truth of what has been asserted respecting the future ; but, 



354 SELECT SPEECHES OF RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 

if there be any still incredulous, he can only be of those who Tvill not 
submit tlieii- reason to authority. To such persons the authority of Mr. 
Foster, his Majesty's Chancellor of the Exchequer for Ireland, would 
probably be conclusive, and Mr. Foster has assured us that final ruin to 
our country must be the consequence of the Union. I will not dwell, 
Mr. Sheriff, on the miseries of my country ; I am disgusted with the 
wretchedness the Union has produced, and I do not dare to trust myself 
with the contemplation of the accumulation of soitow that must over- 
whelm the land if the Union be not repealed. 

"I beg to call the attention of the meeting to another part of the sub- 
ject. The Union, sir, was a violation of our national and inherent rights : 
a flagrant injustice. The representatives whom we had elected for the 
short period of eight years had no authority to dispose of their counti-y 
forever. It cannot be pretended that any direct or express authority to 
that effect was given to them, and the nature of their delegation excludes 
all idea of their having any such by implication. They were the servant:: 
of the nation, empowered to consult for its good ; not its masters to traf- 
fic and dispose of it at their fantasy or for their profit. I deny that the 
nation itself had a right to barter its independence, or to commit politi- 
cal suicide ; but when our servants destroyed our existence as a nation, 
they added to the baseness of assassination all the guilt of high treason. 
The reasoning upon which those opinions are founded is sufficiently ob- 
vious. They require no sanction from the authority of any name ; 
neither do I pretend to give them any weight by declaring them to be 
conscientiously my own ; but if you want authority to induce the con- 
viction that the Union had injustice for its principle, and a crime for 
its basis, I appeal to that of his Majesty's present Attorney-General, 
Mr. Saurin, who, in his place in the Irish Parhament, pledged his cliar- 
aater as a lawyer and a statesman, that the Union must be a violation 
of every moral principle, and that it was a mere question of prudence 
whether it should not be resisted by force. I also appeal to the opinions 
of the late Lord High Chancellor of Ireland, Mr. George Ponsoiiby, 
of the present Solicitor- General, Mr. Bushe, and of that splendid lawyer, 
Mr. Plunket. The Union was therefore a manifest injustice ; and it 
continues to be unjust at this day ; it was a crime, and must be still 
criminal, unless it shall be ludicrously stated, that crime, like wine, 
improves by old age, and that time mollifies injustice into innocence. 
You may smile at the supposition, but in sober sadness you must be 
convinced that we daily suffer injustice ; that every succeeding day adds 
only another sin to the catalogue of British vice ; and that if the Union 
continues it will only make the crime hereditary and injustice perpetual. 

"We have been robbed, my countrymen, most foully robbed, of our 
birthright, of our independence ; may it not be permitted us mournfully 
to ask how this consummation of evil was i^erfected ? For it was not in 
any disastrous battle that our liberties were struck down ; no foreign 



imSH STATE TEIALS. 355 

invader had despoiled the land ; we have not forfeited our country by 
any crimes ; neither did Ave lose it by any domestic insurrection ; no, 
the rebellion was completely put down before the Union was accom- 
plished ; the Irish mihtia and the Irish yeomanry had put it down. 
How, then, have we become enslaved ? Alas ! England, that ought to 
have been to ns a sister and a friend — England, whom we had loved, 
and fought and bled for — England, whom we have protected, and whom 
we do protect — England, at a period when, out of 100,000 of the seamen 
in her service, 70,000 were Irish, England stole upon us like a thief in 
the night, and robbed us of the precious gem of our liberty ; she stole 
from us that in which nought enrighed her, but made us poor indeed ! 
Eeflect then, my friends, on the means employed to effect this disastrous 
measure. 

" I do not speak of the meaner instruments of bribery and corruption. 
We all know that everything was put to sale — nothing profane or sacred 
was omitted in the Union mart. Offices in the revenue, commands in 
the army and navy, the sacred ermine of justice, and the holy altars of 
God, were all profaned and polluted as the rewards of Union services. 
By a vote in favor of the Union, ignorance, incapacity, and profligacy 
detained certain promotion ; and our ill-fated, but beloved country was 
degraded to her utmost limits before she was transfixed in slavery. But 
I do not intend to detain you in the contemplation of those vulgar means 
of parhamentary success — they are within the daily routine of official 
management ; neither will I direct your attention to the frightful recol- 
lection of that avowed fact, which is now part of history, that the rebel- 
lion itself was fomented and encouraged in order to facilitate the Union. 
Even the rebellion Avas an accidental and a secondary cause — ^the real 
cause of the Union lay deeper, but it is quite obvious — it is to be found 
at once in the religious dissensions which the enemies of Ireland have 
created, and continued, and seek to perpetuate amongst themselves, by 
telling us off, and separating us into wretched sections and miserable sub- 
divisions ; they separated the Protestant from the Catholic, and the 
Presbyterian from both ; they revived, every antiquated cause of domes- 
tic animosity, and invented new pretexts of rancor ; but, above all, my 
countrymen, they belied and calumniated us to each other ; they falsely 
declared that we hated each other ; and they continued to repeat that 
assertion until we came to believe it ; they succeeded in producing all 
the madness of party and religious distinctions ; and whilst we were lost 
in the stupor of insanity, they plundered us of our country, and left us to 
recover at our leisure from the horrid delusion into which we had been 
so artfully conducted. 

" Such then were the means by which the Union was effectuated. It 
has stripped us of commerce and wealth — it has degraded us, and de- 
prived us, not only of our station as a nation, but even of the name of 
our country — we are governed by foreigners — foreigners make our laws 
— for were the hundred members who nominally represent Ireland 



356 SELECT SPEECHES OF EICHAED LALOR SHElL. 

iu what is called the Imperial Parliament — were they really our represen- 
tatives, what influence could they, although uubought and unanimous, 
have over the 558 English and Scotch members ? But what is the fact ? 
Why, that out of the hundred, such as they are, that sit for this country, 
more than one fifth know nothing of us, and are unknown to us. What, 
for example, do we know of Andrew Strahan, printer to the king ? What 
can Heni-y Martin, barrister- at-law, care for the rights and liberties of 
Iiishmen ? Some of us may, perhai^s, for oiu' misfortunes, have been 
compelled to read a verbose pamjihlet of James Stevens, but who knows 
anything of one Crile, one Hughan, one Cackin, or of a dozen more 
whose names I could mention, only because I have discovered them 
for the purpose of speaking to you about them ? What sympathy can 
we, in our sufferings, expect from those men? what sohcitude for our 
interests ? what are they to Ireland, or Ireland to them ? No, Mr. She- 
riff, we are not represented ; we have no effectual share in the legisla- 
tion ; the thing is a mere mockery ; neither is the Imperial ParUament 
competent to legislate for us : it is too unwieldy a machine to legislate 
with discernment for England alone ; but with respect to Ireland it has 
all the additional inconveniences that arise from want of interest and 
total ignorance. 

" Sii", when I talk of utter ignorance in Ii-ish affairs of the members of 
the Irish Parhament, I do not exaggerate or mistate ; the ministers 
themselves are in absolute darlcness with respect to this country. I un- 
dertake to demonstrate it. Sir, they have presumed to speak of the 
gTowing prosperity of Ireland ; I know them to be vile and profligate ; I 
cannot be suspected of flattering them ; yet, vile as they are, I do not 
believe that they could have had the audacity to insert in the speech, sup- 
jposed to be spoken by his Majesty, that expression, had they known 
that, in fact, Ireland was in abject and increasing poverty. Sir, they 
were content to take their information from a pensioned Frenchman, a 
being styled Sir Francis d'lvemois, who, in one of the pamphlets which 
it is his trade to write, has proved by excellent samples of vulgar arithme- 
tic, that manufactures are flourishing, om- commerce extending, and our 
felicity consummate. 

" When you detect the ministers themselves in such gross ignorance 
as, upon such authority, to place an insulting falsehood as it were in the 
mouth of our revered sovereign, what think you can be the fitness of the 
minor imps of legislation to make laws for Ireland ? Indeed, the recent 
plans of taxation sufficiently evince how incompetent the present scheme 
of x^arHament is to legislate for Ii'eland. Had we an Irish j)arHament, it 
is impossible to conceive that they would have adopted taxes at once 
oppressive and unproductive ; ruinous to the country, and useless to the 
Crown. No, sir, an Irish x^arliament, acquainted with, the state of the 
countiy, and individually interested to tax proper objects, would have, 
even in this season of distress, no difficulty in raising the necessary sup- 
plies. The loyalty and good sense of the Irish nation would aid them ; 



IKISH STATE TEIALS. 357 

and we should not, as now, perceive taxation unproductive of money, 
but abundantly fertile in discontent. 

"There is another subject that peculiarly requires the attention of 
the legislature : but it is one which can be managed only by a resident 
and domestic parhament — it includes everything that relates to those 
strange and portentous disturbances which, from time to time, affright 
and desolate the fairest districts of the island. It is a deHcate, dijfficult 
subject, and one that would require the most minute knowledge of the 
causes that produce those disturbances, and wotdd demand all the atten- 
tion and care of men, whose individual safety was connected with the 
discovery of a proper remedy. I do not wish to calculate the extent of 
evil that may be dreaded from the outrages I allude to, if our country 
shall continue in the hands of foreign empirics and pretenders ; but it 
is clear to a demonstration that no man can be attached to his King and 
country who does not avow the necessity of submitting the control of 
this political evil to the only competent tribunal — an Irish parhament. 
The ills of this awful moment are confined to our domestic complaints 
and calamities. The great enemy of the liberty of the world extends his 
influence and his xaower from the Frozen Ocean to the Straits of Gib- 
raltar. He threatens us with invasion from the thousand ports of his 
vast empire ; how is it possible to resist him with an impoverished, di- 
vided, and dispirited empire ? If then you are loyal to your excellent 
Monarch — if you are attached to the last relic of political freedom, can 
you hesitate to join in endeavoring to procure the remedy for all your 
calamities — the sure protection against aU the- threats of your enemy — 
the repeal of the Union. Yes, restore to Irishmen their country, and 
you may defy the invader's force : give back to Ireland her hardy and 
brave poj)ulation, and you have nothing to dread from foreign power. 

" It is useless to detain the meeting longer, in detailing the miseries 
that the Union has produced, or in pointing out the necessity that exists 
for its rejDeal. I have never met any main who did not deplore this fatal 
measure which had despoiled his country ; nor do I believe there is a 
single individual in the island who could be found even to pretend ap- 
probation of that measure. I would be glad to see the face of the man, 
or rather of the beast, who could dare to say he thought the Union wise 
or good — for the being who could say so must be devoid of aU the feel- 
ings that distinguish humanity. With the knowledge that such were the 
sentiments of the universal Irish nation, how does it happen that the 
Union has lasted for ten years ? The solution of the question is easy — 
the Union continued only because we despaired of its repeal. Upon this 
despair alone has it continued — yet what could be more absurd than such 
despair ? If the Irish sentiment be but once known — if the voice of six 
mUUons be raised from Cape Clear to the Giant's Causeway — if the men 
most remarkable for their loyalty to their King and attachment to con- 
stitutional liberty will come forward as the leaders of the public voice, 
the nation would, in an hour, grow too great for the chains that now 



358 SELECT SPEECHES OF RICHAED LALOR SHEIL. 

shackle you, and the Union must be repealed without commotion and 
without difficulty. 

"Let the most timid amongst us compare the present probability of 
repeahug the Union with the prospect that in the year 1795 existed of 
that measure being ever brought about. Who in 1795 thought ft 
Union possible ? Pitt dared to attempt it, and he succeeded ; it only 
requires the resolution to attempt its repeal ; in fact, it requires only to 
entertain the hope of repealing it, to make it impossible that the Union 
should continue ; but that pleasing hope could never exist, whilst the 
infernal dissensions on the score of religion were kept up. The Protes- 
tant alone could not expect to liberate his country — the Eoman Catholic 
alone could not do it — neither could the Presbyterian — but amalgamate 
the three into the Irishman, and the Union is repealed. Learn discre- 
tion from your enemies — they have crushed your country by fomenting 
rehgious discord, serve her by abandoning it forever. Let each man 
give up his share of the mischief ; let each man forsake every feeling of 
rancor ; I say not this to barter with you, my countrymen. I require no 
equivalent from you ; whatever course you shall take, my mind is fixed. 
I trample under foot the Catholic claims, if they can interfere with the 
repeal ; I abandon all wish for Emancipation, if it delays the repeal. 
Nay, were Mr. Percival to-morrow to offer me the repeal of the Union 
upon the terms of re-enacting the penal code, I declare from my heart, 
and in the presence of my God, that I would most cheerfully embrace 
this offer. 

"Let us then, my beloved countrymen, sacrifice our wicked and 
groundless animosities on the altar of our country ; let that spirit, which 
heretofore emanating from Dungannon sjiread all over the island, and 
gave light and hberty to the land, be again cherished amongst us — let 
us rally round the standard of old Ireland, and we shall easily procure 
that greatest of political blessings, an Irish King, an Irisli House of 
Lords, and an Irish House of Commons." 

Mr. Slieil then continued : Gentlemen, you have heard that 
speech read from beginning ,to end, because that speech con- 
veys the same sentiments, the same feehngs, and inculcates 
the same great principles, almost in the very same language, 
as we find employed by Mr. O'Connell in 1843 and 18M. That 
long series of speeches and of writings produced by Mr. 
O'Connell within the last nine months, are no more than an 
expansion of the speech of 1810. Was he a conspirator in 
1810 ? If so, he was engaged in a conspiracy with Sir Eobert 
Shaw, who took the chair when the high sheriff left it, and 
declared that it was the boast of his Hfe that he had opposed 
the Union, and that he persevered in the same sentiments; 



lEISH STATE TRL\LS. 359 

and -will a man in 18M be accounted guilty of a crime verging 
on treason, because lie has repeated the opinions which he en- 
tertained wlien the shade of an imputation did not rest upon 
him ? This is a consideration to which, I am sure, you will 
think that too much importance cannot be attached. At that 
aggregate meeting, including so large a portion of the Protest- 
ant inhabitants of this town, with the high sheriJff of the Dub- 
lin corporation in the chair, a series of resolutions were passed 
against the Union. It was determined that petitions should 
be presented to parliament, and that they should be intrusted 
to Sir Robert Shaw and to Mr. Grattan. Sir Eobert Shaw, 
in his answer, stated that he had opposed the Union in parlia- 
ment, and that his opinions were unaltered. The following is 
the answer of Mr. Grattan, and that answer affords a proof of 
the falsehood of an allegation often made, that a great change 
of opinion had taken place in the mind of that illustrious man 
with respect to the Legislative Union : 

' ' Gentlemen — I have the honor to receive an address presented by 
your committee, and an expression of their wishes that I should present 
certain petitions and support the repeal of an act entitled the Act of 
Union ; and your committee adds, that it speaks with the authority of 
my constituency, the freemen and freeholders of the city of Dublin. I 
beg to assure your committee, and through them my much-beloved and 
much-respected constituents, that I shall accede to their proposition. I 
shall present their petitions, and shall support the repeal of the Act of 
Union with that decided attachment to our connexion with Great Britain, 
and to that harmony between the two countries, without which the con- 
nexion cannot last. I do not impair either, as I apprehend, when I as- 
sure you I shall support tlie repeal of the Act of Union. You will please 
to observe that a proposition of that sort, in parliament, to be either 
prudent or possible, must wait till it is called for and backed by the 
nation. When proposed I shall then — as at all times I hope I shall — 
prove myself an Irishman, and that Irishman whose first and last passion 
was his native country. Henby Grattan.'" 

"Backed by the nation." Mark that phrase. It occurs 
again and again in the speeches of Mr. O'Connell. Mr. 
O'ConneE again and again declares that unless backed by the 
nation nothing can be accomplished by him. And if it be a 
crime to apply all the resources of his intellect, with an indefa- 
tigable energy, and an indomitable perseverance to the attain- 



360 SELECT SPEECHES OF ItlCHAKD LALOR SHEIL. 

ment of that object by the means described by Mr. Grattan in 
t]ie phrase, " backed by the nation," then is the son of Daniel 
O'Connell guilty. It will be strange, mdeed, if in the opinion 
of twelve men of plain sense and of sound feeling, it should be 
deemed a crime to seek the attainment of repeal by the only 
iustrumentahty by which Mr. Grattan said it could be effected. 
What is the meaning of " backed by the nation ?" What is 
the nation ? We say, the Irish Catholics, the enormous ma- 
jority of the people, are the nation. You say, the Irish Pro- 
testants, who have the property of the country, who are in the 
exclusive enjoyment of great intellectual advantages, and who 
are imited, organized, and determined, are the Irish nation. 
The Irish Catholics and the Irish Protestants are both in the 
wrong. Neither constitute the Irish nation. Both do ; and it 
was the sustainment of both that Mr. Grattan considered to 
be indispensable to make the proposition in parliament either 
prudent or possible. That just object — the combination of all 
classes and of all parties in this country — Mr. O'Connell has 
labored to attain. You may think that he has labored, and 
will labor in vain, to attain it ; but you cannot consider it 
criminal to toil for its accomplishment ; and if you conceive 
that that was his object and the object of his son — or if you 
have a reasonable doubt upon the subject, you are bound to 
acquit him. In 1812 Mr. Percival lost liis life, and efforts 
were made to construct a cabinet favorable to Emancipation ; 
the project failed, and a state prosecution against the Catholic 
Board was resolved on. Mr. Burrowes was the counsel for the 
defendants, and at the outset of his speech he boldly adverted 
to the fact that not a single Roman Catholic was upon the 
jury. He said : 

"I confess, gentlemeB, I was astonished to find that no Eoman Cath- 
olic was sufi"ered to enter the box, when it is well known that they equal, 
if not exceed, Protestant persons upon other occasions ; and when the 
question relates to privileges of which they claim a participation, and 
you possess a monopoly. I was astonished to see twenty -two Protestant 
persons, of the highest respectability, set aside by the arbitrary veto of 
the Crown, without any alleged insufficiency, upon the sole demerit of 
suspected liberality. I was astonished to find a juror pressed into that 
box, who did not deny that he was a sworn Orangeman, and another who 
was about to admit, until he was silenced, that he had prejudged the 




GRATTAN DEMANDING IRISH INDEPENDENCE. 



IRISH STATE TEIALS. 3G1 

cause. Those occurrences, at the first aspect of them, filled me -with un- 
qualified despair. I do not say that the Crown lawyers have had any 
concex'n in this revolting process, but I will say that they ought to have 
interfered in counteracting a selection which has insulted some of the 
most loyal men of this city, and must disparage any verdict which may 
be thus procured. But, gentlemen, iipon a nearer view of the subject, I 
relinquish the despair by which I was actuated. I rest my hopes upon 
your known integrity, your deep interest in the welfare of the country, and 
the very disgust which yourselves must feel at the manner and motive of 
your array. You did not i:)ress forward into that jury box — you did not 
seek the exclusion, the total exclusion of any Eoman Catholic — you, no 
doubt, would anxiously desire an intermixture of some of those enlight- 
ened Eoman Catholics whom the Attorney-General declared he was cer- 
tain he could convince, but whom he has not ventured to address in that 
box. The painful responsibility cast upon you is not of your own wish- 
ing, and I persuade myself you will, on due reflection, feel more indis- 
posed to those who court and influence your prejudices, and would 
involve you in an act of deep responsibility, without that fair intermix- 
ture of opposite feelings and interest, which, by inviting discussion, and 
balancing afiections, would promise a moderate and respected decision, 
than towards me, who openly attack your prejudices, and strive to arm 
your consciences against them. You know as well as I do that prejudice 
is a deadly enemy to fair investigation — that it has neither eyes nor ears 
for justice — that it hears and sees everything on one side — that to refute 
it is to exasperate it ; and that, when it predominates, accusation is re- 
ceived as evidence, and calumny produces conviction." 

It might at first appear likely tliat a Protestant jury would 
take an address so bold in bad part ; but tliey gave Mr. Bur- 
rowes credit for his manly frankness, and they acquitted the 
traversers. The Crown resorted to a second prosecution ; 
means more effectual were adopted, and a conviction was 
obtained. Mr. Saurin did not deny that the Eoman CathoHcs 
had been excluded. He was of opinion that Protestant as- 
cendency should everywhere prevail, and not least in those 
public tribunals which are armed with so much authority, 
and exercise so much influence over the fortunes of the state. 
I did not blame Mr. Saurin. He acted, in all hkelihood, con- 
scientiously, and whatever were his faults, duplicity was cer- 
tainly not amongst the number. I saw him in the height of 
his power and in his fall ; he was meek in his prosperity, and 
in his adverse fortune he was serene. The lustre of adversity 
shone in his smile ; for his faults, such as they were, his name, 



362 SELECT SrEECHES OF RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 

in an almost inevitable inheritance of antipathy, furnishes an 
excuse. How much more commendable was his conduct and 
the conduct of the government of the day, than if they had 
been profuse of professions they never meant to reahze, and 
had offered an insult to the understanding as well as a gross 
wrong to the rights of the Irish people ; and yet I shall not 
be surprised if, not"udthstandiiig all that has happened, the 
same cant of impartiality shall be persevered in, and that we 
shall hear the same protestations of sohcitude to make no dis- 
tinction between Catholics and Protestants in all departments, 
but more especially in the administration of the law. 

The screen falls — "the little French milliner" is disclosed — 
" by all that is horrible. Lady Teazle ; " yet Joseph preserves 
his self-possession, and deals in sentiment to the last. But if, 
after all that has befallen, my Lord Ehot shall continue to deal 
in sentimentahty in the House of Commons, the exclamation 
of Sir Peter Teazle, " Oh, damn your sentiment ! " will break 
in upon him on every side. The government, as I told you, 
in 1812, succeeded in their state prosecution. "What good 
for the country was effected by it ? Was the Cathohc ques- 
tion put down, or did a verdict facilitate the government of 
Mr. Peel, who was soon after appointed Secretary for Ireland. 
He was an Irish member. You are surprised at the intimation. 
He was returned for the borough of Cashel, where a very small, 
but a very discriminating constituency, were made sensible of 
his surpassing merits. 

It has been remarked that young statesmen who are des- 
tined to operate upon England, are first sent to dissect in this 
country. Mr. Peel had a fine hand and admirable instru- 
ments, and he certainly gave proof that he would give the 
least possible pain in any amputations which he might after- 
wards have to perform. He was decorous — he avoided the 
language of wanton insult — endeavored to give us the advan- 
tages of a mild despotism, and "dwelt in decencies forever." 
Yet was his Irish government, and he must have felt it, an 
utter failure — he must have seen, even then, the irresistible 
arguments in favor of Cathohc Emancipation ; but he had not 
the moral intrepidity to break from his party, and to do at 
once what he was compelled to do afterwards. The Insurrec- 



lEISH STATE TRIALS. 363 

tion Act was renewed, the disturbances of the country were 
not diminished, and Ireland continued to reap the bitter fruits 
of imperial legislation. 

A new policy was tried after Mr. Peel had proceeded to 
England, and the notable expedient was adopted of counteract- 
ing the Secretary with the Lord Lieutenant, and the Lord Lieu- 
tenant with the Secretary. We had Grant against Talbot, and 
Wellesley against Goulbum.. It is almost unnecessary to say 
that a government carried on upon such a principle was incapable 
of good. The Roman Cathohcs of Ireland had been led from 
time to time to entertain the hope that something would be 
done for their rehef. Their eyes were opened at last by the 
disengenuous dealing of George lY., who only smothered his 
laughter with the handkerchief with which he affected to dry 
his eyes ; and Daniel O'Connell, feehng that hberty could 
never be achieved by going through the miserable routine of 
supphcation, founded the celebrated society, by which results 
so great were almost immediately produced — the Catholic As- 
sociation was created by him. He constructed a gigantic en- 
gine by which public opinion was to be worked — he formed 
with singular skiU the smallest wheels of his comphcated ma- 
chinery, and he put it into motion by that continuous current 
of eloquence which gushed with an abundance so astonishing, 
as if from a hot well, from his soul. A vast organization of 
the Cathohc milHons was accomplished ; the Catholic aristo- 
cracy — the middle classes — the entire of the clergy were en- 
rolled in this celebrated confederacy. The government became 
alarmed, and in 1825 a bill was brought in for the suppression 
of this famous league. Mr. O'Connell proceeded to London 
and tendered the most extensive concessions to the govern- 
ment. 

An offer was made to associate the Catholic Church with 
the state. If the Catholic question had been adjusted in 
1825, and upon the terms proposed, it is obvious that the fear- 
ful agitation that disturbed the country during the four suc- 
ceeding years would have been avoided. Not only were the 
offers rejected, but the bill for the suppression of the Catholic 
Association was carried. It was, however, laughed to scorn, 
and proved utterly inoperative. The energy of Mr. O'Connell 



364 SELECT SrEECHES OF RICHARD LALOR SHELL. 

now redoubled. The x^easantry were tauglit to feel that the 
elective franchise was not a trust vested in the tenant for the 
benefit of the landlord. A great agrarian revolt took place, 
accompanied, beyond aU doubt, with great evils, for which, 
however, those by whom justice was so long delayed, are to be 
held responsible ; the Beresfords were overthrown in Water- 
ford ; in Louth the Foresters received a mortal blow ; and at 
length the great Clare election gave demonstrations of a moral 
power, whose existence had scarcely been conjectured. 

I remember to have seen the late Lord Fitzgerald — an ac- 
complished and enhghtened man — looking with astonishment 
at the vast and living mass which he beheld from a window of 
a room in the court-house where that estraordmary contest 
was carried on. There were sixty thousand men beneath him 
— sober, silent, fierce. He saw that something far more im- 
portant than his return to parliament was at stake — Cathohc 
Emancipation was accomplished; and here I shall put two 
questions. The first is this — Do you think that up to the 13th 
of April, 1829, the day on which the royal assent was given to 
the Catholic Belief Bill, the system of government instituted 
and carried on, under the auspices of an imperial parliament, 
was so wise, so just, so salutary, so fr-aught with advantages to 
this country — so conducive to its tranquillization and to the 
development of its vast resources — that for nine-and-twenty 
years the Union ought to have been regarded as a great legis- 
lative blessing to this country? The second question I shall 
put to you is this — does it not occur to you that if the present 
indictment for a conspnacy can be sustained, an indictment for 
a conspiracy might have been just as reasonably preferred 
against the men who had associated themselves for the attain- 
ment of Cathohc Emancipation ? 

There is not a coimt in this indictment which, by the substi- 
tution of " Catholic Emancipation" for "Eepeal," might not 
have been made apphcable to the great struggle of the Irish 
Catholics in 1828 and 1829. Money was collected by the 
Catholic Association. In America, and more especially in 
Canada, strong sympathy for Catholic Ireland was expressed. 
In the Chamber of Deputies, M. Chateaubriand adverted to 
the state of Ireland in the language of minacious intimation. 



lEISH STATE TRmiS. 365 

Enormous assemblages were lield in the south of Ireland, but 
more especially in the county of Kilkenny. Speeches were 
dehvered by Mr. O'Connell and by others, fully as inflamma- 
tory as any which have been read to you. What would have 
been thought of an mdictment for a conspiracy against Mr. 
O'Connell, against the Evening Post, the Freeman's Journal, 
the Morning Eegister, Dr. Doyle, and my friend, Tom Steele, 
who was at that time, as he is now, a knight-errant animated 
by a noble chivahy against oppression in'every form ? Would 
it not have been deemed a monstrous thiug to have read a 
very exciting article in three Eoman CathoUc newspapers, 
against the men by whom perhaps they never had been pe- 
rused ? Such a thing was never thought of. There were, in- 
deed, prosecutions. The individual who now addresses you 
was prosecuted for a speech on the expedition of Wolfe Tone. 
The bills were found ; but Mr. Canning declared in the cabi- 
net that there was not a single hne in the speech, which, if 
spoken in the House of Commons, would have justified a call 
for order, and he denounced the prosecution as utterly unjust. 
The prosecution was accordingly abandoned. But, gentlemen, 
if I had been prosecuted for a conspiracy, and held responsi- 
ble, not for my own speeches, but for those of others, in how 
different and how helpless a position should I have been 
placed ! Have a care how you make a precedent in favor of 
such an indictment. 

During the last nine months, the Attorney-General had am- 
ple opportunities, if his own statement be well founded, of 
instituting prosecutions against individuals for what they 
himselves had written or done. In this proceeding, whose 
tardiness indicates its intent, you will not, I feel confident, be- 
come its auxiliaries. A Coercion Bill, if the Eepeal of the 
Union is to be put down, would be preferable, for it operates 
as a temporary suspension of liberty, but the effects of a ver- 
dict are permanently deleterious. The doctrine of conspiracy 
may be applied to every combination of every kind. It is 
dh^ected against the Eepeal Association to-day ; it may be 
levelled against the Corn Law League to-morrow. In one 
word, every pohtical society, no matter how diversified their 
objects, or how different their constitution, is within its reach. 



366 SELECT SPEECHES OF RICHARD L-U.OR SHEIL. 

The Catholic question having been considered, the Tories 
were put out bj a conspiracy formed amongst themselves.- 
The Whigs come in and the Eeform Bill is carried — how ? A 
hundred and fifty thousand men assemble at Birmingham, and 
threaten to advance on London ; a resolution not to pay taxes 
is passed, and applauded by Lord Fitzwilliam. Lord John Eus- 
sell and Lord Althorpe become the correspondents of the Bir- 
mingham Union. Cumber is reduced to ashes ; Bristol is on 
fire ; the peers resist, and the Whig cabinet with one voice 
exclaims, " Swamp the House of Lords !" And who are the 
men — the bold, audacious men — conspirators, indeed! — ^^iio 
embarked in an enterprise so fearful, and which could be only 
accomphshed by such fearful means ? You will answer. Lord 
Grey. Yes. Lord John Russell ? To be sure. Lord Althorpe ? 
No doubt about it. But is our list exhausted ? Do you re- 
member Mr. Hatchell asking Mr. Ross, " Pray, Mr. Ross, have 
you any acquaintance with Sir James Graham?" It is not 
wonderful that the Attorney-General should have started up 
and thrown his buckler over the Secretary of the Home De- 
partment. 

Sir James Graham has Ireland under his control. From 
the Home Office this prosecution directly emanates. Gam- 
blers denounce dice — drunkards denounce debauch — against 
immorahties let wenchers rail. When Graham indicts for agi- 
tation his change of opinion may, for aught I know, be serious, 
nor have I from motives of partisanship the slightest desire, 
especially behind his back, to assail him ; I will even go so far 
as to admit that his conversion may have been disinterested ; 
but I do say that he is, of all men, the last under whose aus- 
pices a prosecution of this character ought to be carried on. 
The Reform Bill becomes the law of the land — the parliament 
is dissolved, and a new parliament is summoned and called to- 
gether under the Reform Bill — and the very first measure 
adopted in that Reform parliament is a Coercion Bill for Ire~ 
land. The Attorney-General read a speech of Lord John 
Russell's in favor of coercion. He omitted to read the nu- 
merous speeches subsequently made by that noble person, in 
which his mistake with respect to Ireland is honorably con- 
fessed. 



lEISH STATE TEIALS. 367 

Gentlemen, I shall not go through the events of the last ten 
years in detail. It is sujficient to point out to you the various 
questions by which this unfortunate country has been success- 
ively convulsed. The Church Question. The Tithe question. 
The Municipal Bill. The Registration Bill. These questions, 
with their diversified ramifications, have not left us one mo- 
ment's rest. Cabinets have been destroyed by them. The 
great parties in the state have fought for them. Ireland has 
supplied the fatal field for the encounter of contending parties. 
No single measure for the substantial and permanent amelior- 
ation of the country has been adopted ; and here we are, at the 
opening of a new session of parliament, with a poor-rate on our 
estates, a depreciating tariff in our markets, and a state prose- 
cution in her Majesty's Court of Queen's Bench. 

Such, gentlemen, are the results of the system of policy 
adopted in that Imperial Parliament whose wisdom and whose 
beneficence have been made the theme for such lavish pane- 
gyric. Gentlemen, I do not know your political opinions. I 
do not know that there is any one man among you favorable to 
the Repeal of the Union ; but if every one of you are fearful of 
that measure becoming ultimately the occasion of a dismem- 
berment of the empire, still its discussion may not be useless. 
If the councils of the state were governed by no other consid- 
erations than those which are founded upon obvious justice ; 
or if measures were to be carried by syllogisms, and govern- 
ment was a mere matter of dialectics, then all great assem- 
blages of the people should, of course, be deprecated, and every 
exciting adjuration addressed to the passions of the people 
should be strenuously reproved. But it is not by ratiocination, 
that a redress of grievances can be obtained. The agitator 
must sometimes follow the example of the diplomatist, who 
asks for what is impossible, in order that what is possible may 
be obtained. 

It must strike the least observant that when the government 
complains most vehemently of demagogue audacity, their re- 
sentment is the precursor of their concessions. Take, as an 
example, the landlord and tenant commission, which there are 
some conservatives who think will disturb the foundations of 
property, and against which Lord Brougham addressed his 



368 SELECT SPEECHES OF RICHAED LALOR SHEIL. 

admonitory deprecation to Sir Eobert Peel. For my own 
part, I think it may lead to results greater than were contem- 
plated ; for it appears to me to have been chiefly intended as 
a means of diverting public attention from the consideration 
of the other great grievances of the country. The main source 
of all these grievances, I am convinced, is to be found in the 
colonial policy pursued with regard to this country. The 
Union never has been carried into effect. If it had, Ireland 
would not be a miserable dependent in the great imperial fam- 
ily. The Attorney-General expressed great indignation at the 
motto at Mullaghmast — "Nine milhons of people cannot be 
dragged at the tail of any nation on earth." That sentiment 
is taken from a paragraph in the Morning Chronicle newspaper, 
and I have no hesitation in saying that I at once adopt it. To 
mere numbers, without intelligence, organization, or pubUc 
spirit, I for one attach no value. But a great development of 
the moral powers of Ireland has taken place. Instruction is 
universally diffused. The elements of literature, through 
which pohtical sentiment is indirectly circulated, are taught 
by the state. Ireland has, if I may so S]3eak, undergone a spe- 
cies of transformation. By one who had seen her half a cen- 
tury ago, she would be scarcely recognized. The simultane- 
ous, the miraculous abandonment of those habits to which 
Irishmen were once fatally addicted, at the exhortation of an 
humble friar, is a strong indication of what might be done by 
a good government with so fine a people. "Without saying 
that the temperance movement affords a proof of the facility 
with which the national enthusiasm can be organized and di- 
rected, I think it is one among the many circumstances which 
should induce us to think that we have come to such a pass in 
this country that some great measures for its security and for 
its hap.piness are required. 

I perceive the great literary organ of the Whig party has 
recently suggested many bold measures, which it represents 
as necessary for Ireland. There are numerous difficulties con- 
nected with some of the propositions to which I refer ; but 
there is one which I consider to be as practicable as it is plain 
and just. It is recommended that the Imperial parhament 
should sit at certain intervals in this great city. I cannot see 



IRISH STATE TRIALS. 369 

any sound objection in the Imperial Parliament assembling in 
the month of October, for the discharge of Irish business alone, 
and that all imperial questions should be reserved until the 
London session commenced, as it now does in the month of 
Tebruarj. The public departments, it is true, are aU located 
in London ; but during the Irish session a reference to those 
departments would not be required. Such a session might be 
inconvenient to EngHsh members ; but the Eepeal agitation 
and a state prosecution, like the present, are attended with in- 
conveniences far greater than any which English members in 
crossing the Irish Channel would encounter. The advantages 
which would accrue from the reahzation of this project are of 
no ordinary kind. The intercourse of the two countries would 
be augmented to a great extent — their feelings would be iden- 
tified — national prejudices would be reciprocally laid aside. 
An English domestication would take place. Instead of lend- 
ing money upon Irish mortgages. Englishmen would buy lands 
in Ireland, and Hve upon them. The absentee drain would be 
diminished. The value of property would be very nearly 
doubled. Great pubhc works would be undertaken ; and the 
natural endowments of the country would be turned to account. 
This city would appear in renovated splendor. Your streets 
would be shaken by the roU of the gorgeous equipages in 
which the first nobles of the coimtry would be borne to the 
senate house, from which the money changers should be 
driven. The mansions of the aristocracy would blaze with 
that useful luxury which ministers to the gratification of the 
affluent, and to the employment and the comforts of the poor. 
The sovereign herseK would not deem the seat of her parlia- 
ment unworthy of her residence. The frippery of the vicere- 
gal court would be swept away. "We should look upon royalty 
itself, and not upon the tinsel image ; we should behold the 
Queen of England, of Ireland, and of Scotland in all the pomp 
of her imperial regality, with a diadem — the finest diadem in 
the world — ghttering upon her brow, while her countenance 
beamed with the expression of that sentiment which becomes 
the throned monarch better than the crown. We should see 
her accompanied by the prince of whom it is the highest praise 
to say that he has proved himseK to be not unworthy of her. 



370 SPEECHES OF RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 

We should see her encompassed by all the drcumstances that 
associate endearment with respect. We should not only be- 
hold the Queen, but the mother and the wife, and see her 
fi-om the highest station on which a human being could be 
placed, presenting to her subjects the finest model of every 
conjugal and maternal virtue. 

I am not speaking in the language of a factitious enthusiasm 
when I speak thus. I am sure that this project is not only 
feasible but easy. If the people of this country were to com- 
bine in demanding it, a demand so just and reasonable could 
not be long refused. It is not subject to any one of the ob- 
jections which attach to the Repeal Question. No rupture of 
the two parhaments — no dismemberment of the empire is to 
be apprehended. Let Irishmen unite in putting forth a re- 
quisition for a purpose which the minister would not only find 
expedient, but inevitable. But if you, gentlemen, shall not 
only not assist in an undertaking so reasonable and so safe, but 
shall assist the Attorney-General in crushing the men who 
have had the boldness to complain of the grievances of their 
country, you will lay Ireland prostrate ; every effort for her 
amehoration will be idle ; every remonstrance will not only 
be treated with disregard, but with disdain ; and, for the next 
twenty years, we may as well rehnquish every hope for our 
country. 

Gentlemen, you may strike agitation dumb — you may make 
millions of mutes ; but beware of that dreary silence, whose 
gloomy taciturnity is only significant of the determination of its 
fearful purpose. Beware of producing a state of things which 
may eventuate in those incidents of horror which every good 
man wiU pray God to avert, and which will be lamented by 
those who contribute to their occurrence when repentance like 
that of those who are forever doomed, shall be unavailing, and 
contrition shall be in vain. Gentlemen of the jury, I do not 
deny that strong speeches have been made by my client, and 
by the rest of the traversers ; but I do deny that those speeches, 
when taken altogether, bear the interpretation put upon them. 
To this subject I shall revert. At present I entreat you to 
consider whether the speeches of Mr. John O'Connell are of a 
more exciting and inflammatory character than those which 



lEISH STATE TRIALS. 371 

are spoken in almost every popular assembly, whether it be 
Whig, Kadical, or Conservative. 

Mr. John O'OonneU proposed the health of the Queen in 
language of enthusiastic loyalty at Mullaghmast, and added 
that the speech delivered by the Queen was the speech of the 
ministers, and could not be justly considered as the emanation 
of her own unbiased mind. This is, beyond aU question, con- 
stitutional doctrine; although the Attorney-General took a 
most especial care not to mention this ; indeed he made an 
ultra forensic endeavor to convey to you the impression that 
the traversers had spoken of her Majesty in the language of 
personal disrespect. He was hurried away so far by an un- 
fortunate impetuosity as to start up during the trial and say 
that her Majesty had been spoken of as a fishwoman. Fox 
this most gross misrepresentation there is not the shghtest 
shadow of foundation. In every speech in which any allusion 
to the Queen was made, the most profound deference was ex- 
pressed for the sovereign, who enjoys the unaltered and unal- 
terable confidence of her Irish people. Mr. John O'ConneU 
may have used strong expressions, but he is not indicted for 
them. He is indicted for a conspiracy, and for nothing else. 
And even if he were indicted for these strong expressions, in 
the uniform habit of Enghshmen in their pubhc discussions, he 
would find a justification. 

You, probably, have read some of the speeches made at the 
meetings of the Anti-Corn Law League. They were fuUy as 
violent as the Repeal harangues. The aristocracy is de- 
nounced as " selfish," " sordid," and "base-hearted." A total 
overthrow of the existing order of society is foretold ; refer- 
ences are made to the French Revolution ; and the great pro- 
prietors of the country are warned to beware. But the Anti- 
Corn Law League, it may be said, is a Badical institution. 
How is it the Tories themselves, when under the influence of 
partisanship, expressed themselves in reference to the sovereign 
herseK ? You cannot have forgotten the contumeKes heaped 
upon the head of the Queen upon the resignation, in 1839, of 
Sir Robert Peel. I will not, gentlemen, disgust you by a more 
distinct reference to those traitorous diatribes, in which even 
clergymen took part. It is better we should inquire how it is 



372 SELECT SPEECHES OF EICHARD lALOR SHEIL. 

tliat gentlemen connected witli these very prosecutions liave 
thought it decorous to comport themselves when then* own 
passions were excited. The name of the Eight Honorable 
Frederick Shaw is attached to the proclamation. I hold in my 
hand the peroration of a speech delivered by that gentleman, 
and reported in the Evening Mail. 

" The government miglit make what regulation it pleased ; but he 
trusted the people knew their duty too well to submit to its enactments. 
It might degrade our mitres ; it might deprive us of our j)roperties ; 
but if the government dared to lay its hand on the Bible, then we must 
come to an issue. It will cover it with our bodies. My friends, will you 
permit your brethren to call out to you in vain ? In the name of my 
country and my country's God, I will appeal from a British House of 
Commons to a British people. My countrymen would obey the laws so 
long as they were properly administered ; but if it were sought to lay 
sacrilegious hands on the Bible, to tear the standard of the living God, 
and to raise a mutilated one in its stead, then it would be no time to 
halt between two opinions — then, in every hill and every valley would 
resound the rallying cry of ' To your tents, O Israel ! " 

I won't ask the Attorney-General for Ireland what he thinks 
of this, because this speech refers to a subject somewhat em- 
barrassing to him ; and what his opinions are, upon the Edu- 
cation Board, it is not very easy to conjecture ; but I may 
venture to ask the Solicitor- General, who is himself a com- 
missioner of the Education Board, whether Daniel O'Connell, 
in his whole course of agitation, ever uttered a speech half so 
inflammatory as this ? With respect to Mr. Sergeant Warren, 
he, I suppose, agrees in every word of it, and only laments, 
that, after so much sound and fury, the Recorder of Dubhn is 
the steadfast supporter of the government, by whom all the 
misdeeds thus eloquently denounced have been subsequently 
committed. 

Gentlemen, I find in the Evening Packet of the 2'ith of 
January, 1837, an account of a great Protestant meeting Avhich 
took place at the Mansion House, where all the great re23re- 
sentatives of the Conservative interests in this country were 
assembled. Some very strong speeches, indeed, were made at 
that meeting. The Earl of Charle-ville said, " Well, gentlemen, 
you have a rebellious parhament ; you have a Lord Lieutenant 
the slave and minion of a rebellious parhament." That sjpeech 



IRISH STATE TRIALS. 373 

was heard by tlie Eight Honorable Thomas Berry Cusack 
Smith. Did he remonstrate against the use of language so un- 
qualified? Not at all. He got up and made a speech, in 
which he stated that he was sorry to find that " Eoman Catho- 
lic members of parhament paid so little regard to their oaths." 
When the right honorable gentleman had such impressions, I 
cannot feel surprised that care should have been taken to ex- 
clude every Eoman Cathohc from the jury-box. Let him not 
misapprehend me. I do not refer to his language in the 
sphit of resentment. Eesentment is not the feeling which the 
conduct of the right honorable gentleman is calculated to 
produce. 

The right honorable gentleman has expressed great indig- 
nation at the references made at Mullaghmast to transactions 
from which the veil of obhvion ought not to be withdrawn. 
He said, and justly enough, that men should not grope in the 
annals of their country for the purpose of disinterring those 
events whose resuscitation can but appall and scare us. But 
how does the right honorable gentleman reconcile that posi- 
tion .with his having been himself a party to a resolution 
passed at the meeting of which I am speaking, in which it is 
stated that the condition of the Protestants of Ireland is 
almost as alarming as it was in the year 1641, when events 
took place from whose recollection we ought to turn with hor- 
ror and dismay. I referred you, gentlemen, to speeches. 
Permit me now to refer you to the great monster meetings 
which have taken place in assertion of the rights of the Pro- 
testants of Ireland. Mark, I do not complain of those meet- 
ings. I do not complain that seventy-five thousand men should 
have assembled and moved in order of battle ; but I do com- 
plain that the men who look upon those assemblages with so 
much indulgence, when the purposes of their own party were 
to be promoted, denounced, as treasonable, assembhes in which 
no such demonstration of organized and perfectly disciphned 
physical force was made. 

The first meeting of the monster character to which I shall 
refer is the great Cavan meeting, where twenty thousand men 
assembled under circumstances of such deep impressive- 
iiess, as to render them equivalent in practical effect to five 



374: SELECT SPEECHES OF RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 

times til at number of such a peasantry as attended the Repeal 
demonstration. The following incident is illustrative : The 
Rev. Marciis Beresford stood up, and, after a speech in his 
accustomed vein, said : 

" I see amongst us a good and lionest man, from the county Monaghan, 
who rendered considerable service, by routing Mr. John Lawless from 
Ballibay — I mean Mr. Samuel Gray, and were I a poet I should intro- 
duce him to you by a couplet : 

Here is Blr. Samuel Q-ray, 

The Protestant liero of Ballibay. 

He is a good, honest straightforward Protestant — as glad to see the Pro- 
testants of Cavan as they are to see him." 

Mr. Samuel Gray, who appears to have been transported 
by the reception given him by his Protestant brethren, then 
came forward, and was received with loud cheers. He said: 

" He was a very humble individual, and could only claim the merit of 
being a sincere and consistent Protestant. He knew the Orangemen of 
Monaghan well — they were all prepared, and in the horn- of danger would 
be ready to assist their brethren. As long as the spirit of the Protest- 
ants of Ulster remained unbroken — as long as they stuck together* heart 
and hand — so long may they defy Mr. O'Connell, aided by a Whig gov- 
ernment, to put them down. Should the storm arise, a signal would be 
sufficient to bring him and the Orangemen of Monaghan to the assistance 
of their brethren." 

But let us now proceed to the picturesque account given of 
the Hillsborough meeting, celebrated in the annals of Protest- 
ant agitation, by the Evening Mail : 

At an early hour of the morning (some of them, indeed, over night) 
the great landed proprietors of the county repaired to the different points 
on their respective estates at which it had been previously agreed they 
should meet their tenants, and march then at their head to the general 
place of assemblage, so that the area in front of the hustings did not pre- 
sent a very crowded appearance, until the men arrived in large masses, 
each having the pride of marching, border fashion, shoulder by shoulder, 
beside his neighbor and brother, with whom he was ready to sacrifice life 
in defence of his countiy and rehgion. Shortly after eleven o'clock, a 
tremendous shout from the town announced the approach of the first 
party. They were from Moira, and were headed by the Eevereud Holt 
Waring, who was drawn by the people. A flag, the union-jack, wns 
hoisted at Mr. E. EeUly's, as the signal of their arrival. In a few mo- 



IKI8H STATE TKIALS. 375 

menta they were seen descending the steep hill from town, and ap- 
proaching the place of meeting in a close, dark, and dense mass, com- 
prising certainly not less than twenty thousand persons. Having escort- 
ed Mr. Waring to the foot of the platform they received his thanks, 
expressed in warm and energetic language, and having given three 
cheers, deployed round and took the position assigned them. . . 
Amongst those who marched at the head of the largest battalion, if we 
may use the expression, were the Marquises of Londonderry and Down- 
shire ; Lord Olanwilliam, Sir Eobert Bateson, Colonel Forde, Colonel 
Blacker, Lord Castlereagh, and Lord Eoden. The latter had fifteen 
thousand men in his followers. They marched from Dromore. At 
twelve o'clock the scene was the most imposing that fancy could conceive, 
or that language possesses the power of depicting. The spectacle was 
grand, unique, sublime. There certainly could not have been, upon the 
most moderate computation, less than seventy-five thousand persons 
present, exclusive of the thousands who filled the town, or thronged to 
absolute impediment all the adjacent roads and avenues." 

From that description, gentlemen, I turn to a resolution 
passed by the Irish Orangemen on the 12th November, 1834, 
and which I find in the appendix to the report from the select 
committee on Orange lodges : 

" And, lastly, we would beg to call the attention of the Grand Lodge, 
and through them return our heartfelt thanks and congratulations to our 
brethren through the various parts of Ireland, who, in the meetings of 
three thousand in Dublin, four thousand at Bandon, thirty thousand in 
Cavan, and seventy-five thousand at HillslDorough, by their strength of 
numbers, the rank, the respectability, and orderly conduct of their at- 
tendance — the manly and eloquent expression of every Christian and 
loyal sentiment, vindicated so nobly the character of our institution 
against the aspersion thrown on it, as the 'paltry remnant of a faction.' " 

That phrase, gentlemen, is one which Lord Stanley, in one of 
his wayward moods, was pleased to apply to the Orangemen of 
Ireland. Gentlemen, in the part of the report which I have 
read to you, there are some remarkable entries relating to a 
subject of which you have heard a good deal from the Attorney- 
General ; and although I deviate, I am aware, from the order 
of topics which I had prescribed to myself, yet, finding in the 
book before me matter which seems to me to be exceedingly 
pertinent to that topic, I shall now advert to it. Gentlemen, 
the entries to which I am alluding are these : 



376 SELECT SPEECHES OF EICHAIID LALOR SHEIL. 

"15th February, 1833, William Scott, IGth company Eoyal Sappers 
aud Miners. That the committee would most wiUingly forward all docu- 
ments connected with the Orange system to any confidential persons in 
Ballymoua, as jirudence would not permit the printed documents should 
be forwarded direct to our military brethren." 

" 1st January, 1884. — Eesolved, that warrant 1592 be granted to Joseph 
Mins, of the 1st Eoyals. 

" 17th December, 1829, moved by the Eev. Charles Boyton, seconded 
by Edward Cottiugham, that the next warrant number be issued to the 
66th regiment, and that the Quebec brethren be directed to send in a 
correct return, in order that new warrants may be issued." 

Gentlemen, I refer you to these resolutions with no other 
view than to show you what proceedings men who conspke to 
estabhsh an influence over the army naturally adopt. If it 
was the object of the traversers to seduce the army from their 
allegiance, would not expedients have been adopted very dif- 
ferent from those imputed to the defendants ? Would not re- 
peal societies have been formed ? Would not a clandestine 
correspondence have taken place with the "mihtary brethren ?" 
Would not money have been distributed to the soldiery? 
Would not the propagators of mutiny have been located in the 
public-houses frequented by the soldiery ? Would not Roman 
Cathohc priests who attend at the mihtary hospitals, have 
been charged to instill repeal principles into the soldier's ear ? 
Does anything of this kind appear to have been done ? A 
letter written by the Rev. Mr. Power — a Waterford priest, who 
is not made a defendant — who is not to be punished for his 
letter — ^is given in evidence against my client, although he is 
as innocent of its composition as the foreman of your jmy. 
"When that letter appeared in the Nation newspaper, why was 
not an ex officio information filed against the Rev. Mr. Power, 
whose manuscript would most certainly have been given up ? 
But that would not have answered the purpose of the Attor- 
ney-General, whose object it was to ensnare. The Attorney- 
General has not suggested a reason, or glanced at a pretence 
for not having indicted Father Power. He read his letter 
from the beginning to the termination. He told you that it 
was written by a priest — that his name was to it. He does not 
prosecute the priest — he does not prosecute the paper, but 
reserves it for the conspiracy on which his official renown is to 



lEISH STATE TRIALS.. 377 

be founded. What gentlemen, has been the course adopted 
by the government in those prosecutions ? Sir Edward Sug- 
den begins by dismissing some of the most respectable magis- 
trates of the country, on account of something or other that 
was said in the House of Commons, and because " the meet- 
ings gave a tendency to outrage." The direct contrary has 
been proved by every one of the witnesses for the Crown, and 
Mr. Koss, the clandestine sub-inspector of the Home Office, in 
the very last words of his examination, stated that he saw no 
tendency to outrage whatsoever. Lord Cottenham declared 
in the House of Lords, that the proceeding of the Lord Chan- 
cellor was utterly unconstitutional. Let me be permitted, 
gentlemen, to contrast the proceedings adopted by the Lord 
Chancellor of L'eland with the doctrines laid down in the 
charge of Mr. Baron Alderson, in his charge to the grand jury, 
delivered at the Monmouth summer assizes, 1839. It is re- 
ported in the 9th Carrington and Payne, page 95 : 

• 
"There is no doubt tliat the peoiDle of this countiy have a perfect right 
to meet for the purpose of stating what are, or even what they consider 
to be, their grievances ; but in order to transmit that right unimpaired 
to posterity, it is necessary that it should be regulated by law and re- 
strained by reason. Therefore, let them meet if they will in open day, 
peaceably and quietly ; and they would do wisely, when they meet, to 
do so under the sanction of the constituted authorities of the country. 
To meet under u-rosponsible presidency is a dangerous thing. Never- 
theless, if when they do meet under that irresponsible presidency they 
conduct themselves with peace, tranquiUity, and order, they will, per- 
haps, lose their time, but nothing else. They will not put other people 
into alarm, terror, and consternation. They will probably in the end 
come to the conclusion, that they have acted foolishly ; but the constitu- 
tion of this country did not, God be thanked, punish persons who mean 
to do that which was right, in a peaceable and orderly manner, and who 
are only in error in the views which they have taken on some subject of 
poHtical interest." 

Has a single respectable gentlemen of station, and rank, 
and living in the vicinity of the place where any of those 
meetings were held, been produced to state to you that they 
were the source of apprehension in the neighborhood ? Has 
any man been produced to you who stated that they had even 
a tendency to outrage ? Not one. 



378 SELECT SPEECHES OF EICHAKD LALOE SHEIL. 

[Mr. Shell was interrupted at this period of his address by an 
intimation that the jury wished to retire for refreshment.] 

Mr. Sheil, when their lordships returned into court, re- 
sumed as follows : I have already called attention to the fact 
that none of the gentry of the country were brought forward 
to state what the character of these meetings was. All the 
official persons examined — among whom were several of the 
high constables of the various districts — concurred in stating 
that there was no violation of the peace at any of them. In- 
deed, the assertion of the Attorney- General w^as, that the peace 
was kept — kept with the malevolent intention of enabhng the 
whole population to rise at a given time, and establish a re- 
public, of which Mr. O'Connell was to be the head. Forty- 
one of these meetings were held — all of the same character — 
and at length a proclamation was determined on and issued 
for the purpose of putting a stop to the Clontarf meeting. 
You have heard the remarks of Mr. O'Connell, in reference to 
the course adopted towards that meeting, and to me they ap- 
pear extremely reasonable. Notice of that meeting had been 
given for three weeks, yet the proclamation was not published 
until the day before that on which it was to have taken place. 
Mr. O'Connell did not charge the government, when acting in 
this way, and delaying its measures till the last moment, with 
being capable of such an atrocious and destructive attempt on 
the lives of the people, as might have been perpetrated by 
sending the army amongst an unarmed populace, if the meet- 
ing had taken place. Such an event might have taken place ; 
and it is to be regretted that a more timely warning, one that 
would have removed all dpubt and uncertainty, was not given. 

I pass this consideration by, and come to another point. It 
is a usual practice — a rule in fact — that when a privy council 
is to assemble, summonses are directed to be issued to all pri- 
vy councillors, being within the vicinity of the city of Dublin. 
On this occasion such summonses were not issued. I am 
given to understand that Chief Baron Brady, who is in the 
habit of attending at councils, was not summoned. The Right 
Honorable Anthony Richard Blake, a Roman Cathohc gen- 
tleman, who was appointed Chief Remembrancer of the Ex- 
chequer under a Troy administration — the intimate friend of 



lEISH STATE TRIAXS. 379 

the Marquis Wellesley — a man who had never appeared in 
pubKc assembhes, or interfered in the proceedings of public 
meetings — a man who had never uttered an inflammatory 
harangue in his hfe — that gentlemen did not receive a sum- 
mons. I will make no comment on this omission of the gov- 
ernment on this occasion, but such undoubtedly is the fact. I 
have told you who did not receive summonses, and I shall 
proceed to state who did receive them. The Eecorder of the 
city of Dublin — by whom the jury list was to be revised — he 
received a summons. In his department it was that an event 
most untoward, as respects the traversers, befell. It was sug- 
gested in this court that the jury hst possibly might have been 
mutilated or decimated — for decimation it was — ^by an acci- 
dent — perhaps by a rat, as was suggested by one of the 
court. 

I am far from suggesting that there was any intentional 
foul play in this decimation, but that a large portion of the hst 
was omitted is beyond a doubt. I state the fact and make no 
comment on it. Well, an application was made for the names 
of the witnesses on the back of the document, on behalf of the 
traversers. One of the judges declared he thought it matter 
of right ; another of the judges intimated his opinion that it 
would be advisable for the Crown to furnish the list within a 
reasonable time. From that day to this the list has never 
been given. The hst of jurors is drawn by ballot : there are 
eleven Cathohcs upon it. They are struck off. The trial 
comes on. A challenge is put into the array, upon the ground 
that one tenth, or very nearly one tenth of the jury list was 
suppressed. One of the court expresses an opinion that the 
challenge is a good one. His brethren differ from him ; but 
when in a trial at bar, at the instance of the Crown, one of the 
judges gives an intimation so unequivocal as to the construc- 
tion of the jury hst, perhaps it would have been more advisa- 
ble for the Crown to have discharged the order for a special 
jury, and to have directed the high sheriff of the city to have 
returned a panel. 

I mention these incidents, gentlemen, in order that your 
feeling that the traversers have been deprived of some of those 
contingent benefits given them by the law, should give them 



380 SELECT SPEECHES OF RICHAED LALOR SHEEL. 

an equivalent for any loss wliich they may liave sustained in 
your anxious performance of your sacred duty. At length, 
in the midst of profound silence, the Attorney-General states 
the case for the Crown, and consumes eleven hours in doing 
so. I was astonished at his brevity, for the pleading on which 
his speech was founded is the very Behemoth of indictments, 
which, as you see, " upheaves its vastness " on that table. 
Nothing comparable in the bigness of its gigantic dimensions 
has ever yet been seen. The indictment in Hardy's case, 
whose trial lasted ten or eleven days, does not exceed three or 
four pages ; but this indictment requires an effort of physical 
force to hft it up. Combined with this indictment was a tre- 
mendous bill of particulars in keeping with it. 

Gentlemen, the Attorney-General, as I have abeady ob- 
served to you at the outset of these observations, denounced 
the traversers at the close of almost every sentence that was 
uttered by him ; but it struck me that it was only in reference 
to two of these charges that he broke forth in a burst of gen- 
uine and truly impassioned indignation. The first of those 
charges was — a conspiracy to diminish the business of a 
court of law. How well the great Lord Chatham exclaimed — 
I remember to have read it somewhere, but I forget where — 
" Shake the whole constitution to the centre, and the lawyer 
will sit tranquil in his cabinet ; but touch a single thread in 
the cobwebs of "Westminster Hall, and the exasperated spider 
crawls out in its defence." The second great hit of the right 
honorable gentlemen was made when he charged Mr. O'Con- 
nell with a deplorable ignorance of law, in stating certain 
prerogatives of the Crown. 

With respect, gentlemen, to the arbitration courts, the Soci- 
ety of Friends are as liable to an indictment for conspiracy as 
the defendants. The regulations under which the Quaker ar- 
bitration system is carried on will be laid before you ; and the 
opinions of Lord Brougham, who has always been the stren- 
uous advocate of the arbitration system, will, I am sure, have 
their due weight upon you. "With regard to Mr. O'Connell's 
alleged mistake, respecting the power of the Crown to issue 
wi'its — what is it, after all, but a project for swamping the House 
of Commons, analogous to that of Sir Ja mes Graham and 



IRISH STATE TEIALS. 381 

my Lord Stanley for swamping the House of Lords? The 
plain truth is this — the sovereign has the abstract right to 
create new boroughs. But the exercise of that right might be 
regarded as inconsistent with the principles of the constitution. 
Lord Denman and one of his late Majesty's law advisers in 
the House of Commons distinctly asserted the right to issue 
writs; and although that opinion was reprehended by Sir 
Charles Wetherell, I believe that of its being strict law there 
can be httle doubt. 

But the real question between the Attorney-General and the 
traversers, and the only one to which you will be disposed to 
pay much regard, was raised by the Attorney-General when he 
said that there existed a dangerous conspbacy, of which the 
object was to prepare the great body of the people to rise at a 
signal, and to erect a sanguinary repubhc, of which Daniel 
O'Connell should be the head. Gentlemen, how do men pro- 
ceed who engage in a guilty enterprise of this kind? They 
bind each other by solemn oaths. They are sworn to secrecy, 
to silence, to deeds, or to death. They associate superstition 
with atrocity, and heaven is invoked by them to ratify the cov- 
enants of hell. They fix a day, an hour, and hold their assem- 
blages in the midst of darkness and of solitude, and verify the 
exclamation of the conspirator, in the language of the great 
observer of our nature : 

"Oh, Conspiracy, 

Wliere wilt thou find a cavern dark enough 

To hide thy monstrous visage ?" 

How have the repeal conspu-ators proceeded ? Every one of 
their assemblages has been qpen to the pubhc. For a shil- 
hng, all they said, or did, or thought, was known to the gov- 
ernment. Everything was laid bare and naked to the pubhc 
eye ; they stripped their minds in the pubhc gaze. No oaths, 
no declaration, no initiation, no form of any kind was resorted 
to. They did not even act together. Mr. Duffy, proprietor of 
the Nation, did not attend a single meeting in the country. 
My client attended only three : Mr. Tierney, the priest, at- 
tended no more than one. It would have been more manly on 
the part of the Attorney-General to have indicted Dr. Higgins 
or Dr. Cantwell, or, as he was pleased to designate them, 



382 SELECT SPEECBDES OF KICHAKD LALOR SHEIL. 

Bisliop Higgins and Bishop Cantwell. Well, why did he not 
catch a bishop — if not Cantwell, at all events Higgins ? For 
three months we heard nothing but " Higgins, Higgins, Hig- 
gins." The Times was redolent of Higgins ; sometimes he 
was Lord Higgins, then he was Priest Higgins, afterwards Mr. 
Higgins. But wherefore is not this redoubted Higgins indict- 
ed, or why did you not assail the great John of Tuam himself? 
He would not have shrunk from your persecution, but, with 
his mitre on his head and his crozier in his hand, he would 
have walked in his pontifical vestments into jail, and smiled 
disdainfully upon you. But you did not dare to attack him, 
but fell on a poor Monaghan priest, who only attended one 
meeting, and only made one speech about the " Yellow Ford," 
for which you should not include him in a conspiracy, but 
should make him professor of rhetoric at Maynooth. 

Gentlemen, an enormous mass of speeches dehvered by Mr. 
O'Connell within the last nine months has been laid before 
you. I think, however, you will come to the conclusion that 
they are nothing more than a repetition of the opinions which 
he expressed in 1810 ; and when you come to consider them in 
detail, you will, I am sure, be convinced that these speeches 
were not merely interspersed with references to peace and 
order, with a view to escape from the law, but that there runs 
through the entire mass of thought that came from the mind 
of Mr. O'Connell a pervading love of order, and an unaffected 
sentiment of abhorrence for the employment of any other than 
loyal, constitutional, and pacific means for the attainment of 
his object. He attaches fully as much importance to the 
means as to the end. He declares that he would not purchase 
the repeal of the Union at the cost of one drop of blood. He 
announces that the moment the government calls upon him to 
disperse his meetings, these meetings shall be dispersed. He 
does but ask " the Irish nation to back him ;" for from that 
backing he anticipates the only success to which, as a good 
subject, as a good citizen, and as a good Christian, he could 
aspire. 

But if, gentlemen, it be suggested that in popular harangues 
obedience to the laws and submission to authority are easily 
simulated, I think I may fearlessly assert that of the charges 



IRISH STATE TRIALS. 383 

preserved against him liis life affords the refutation, A man 
cannot wear the mask of loyalty for forty-four years ; however 
skUlfully constructed, the vizor will sometimes drop off, and the 
natural truculence of the conspirator must be disclosed. You 
may have heard many references made to the year 1798, and 
several stanzas of a long poem have been read to you, in order 
to fasten them on Mr. O'Connell. 

It was in 1798 that the celebrated man was called to the bar, 
who was destined to play a part so conspicuous on the theatre 
of the world. He was in the bloom of youth — in the full flush 
of life — the blood bounded in his veins, and in a frame full of 
vigor was embodied an equally elastic and athletic mind. He 
was in that season of life, when men are most disposed to high 
and daring adventure. He had come from those rocks and 
mountains, of which a description so striking has appeared iu 
the reports of the speeches which have been read to you. He 
had listened, as he says, to the great Atlantic, whose surge 
rolls unbroken from the coast of Labrador. He carried enthu- 
siasm to romance ; and of the impressions which great events 
are calculated to make upon minds like his, he was peculiarly 
susceptible. He was unwedded. He had given no hostages 
to the state. The conservative affections had not tied theu- 
ligaments, tender, but indissoluble about his heart. There was 
at that time an enterprise on foot ; guilty, and deeply guilty, 
indeed, but not wholly hopeless. The peaks that overhang 
the Bay of Bantry are dimly visible from Iveragh. What part 
was taken in that dark adventure by this conspirator of sixty- 
nine ? Curran was suspected — Grattan was suspected. Both 
were designated as traitors unimpeached ; but on the name of 
Daniel O'Connell a conjecture never lighted. 

And can you bring yourselves to believe that the man who 
turned with abhorrence from the conjuration of 1798, would 
now, in an old age, which he himself has called not premature, 
engage in an insane undertaking, in which his own life, and 
the lives of those who are dearer to him than himself, and the 
Hves of hundreds of thousands of his countrymen, would, be- 
yond all doubt, be sacrificed ? Can you bring yourselves to 
beheve that he would blast the laurels, which it is his boast 
that he has won without the effusion of blood — that he would 



384 SELECT SrEECHES OF RICHAKD LALOE SHELL. 

drench the land of his birth, of his affections, and of his re- 
demption, in a deluge of profitless massacre, and that he would 
lay prostrate that great moral monument which he has raised 
so high that it is visible from the remotest region of the world ? 
What he was in 1798, he is in 1844. 

Do you beheve that the man who aimed at a revolution 
would repudiate French assistance, and denounce the present 
djTiasty of France ? Do you think that the man who aimed 
at revolution, would hold forth to the detestation of the world, 
the infamous slavery by which the great trans- Atlantic repub- 
hc, to her everlasting shame, permits lierseK to be degraded ? 
Or, to come nearer home, do you think that the man who 
aimed at revolution, would have indignantly repudiated the 
proffered junction with the English Chartists? Had a com- 
l3ination been effected between the Chartists and the Eepeal- 
ers it would have been more than formidable. At the head of 
that combination in England was Mr. Feargus O'Connor, once 
the associate and friend of Daniel O'Connell. The entire of 
the lower orders in the north of England were enrolled in a 
powerful organization. A league between the Repealers and 
the Chartists might have been at once effected. Chartism 
uses its utmost and most clandestine efforts to find its way into 
this country. O'Connell detects and crushes it. Of the 
charges preferred against him, am I not right when I exclaim 
that his hfe contains the refutation ? To the charge that Mr. 
O'Connell and his son conspired to excite animosity amongst 
her Majesty's subjects, the last observation that I have made 
to you is more pecuharly applicable. 

Gentlemen, Mr. O'Connell and his co-religionists have been 
made the objects of the fiercest and coarsest vituperation ; and 
yet I defy the most acute and diligent scrutiny of the entire of 
the speeches put before you, to detect a single expression — 
one soHtary phrase — which reflects in the remotest degree up- 
on the Protestant rehgion. He has left all the contumely 
heaped upon the form of Christianity which he professes ut- 
terly unheeded, and the Protestant Operative Society has not 
provoked a retort ; and every angry disputant has, without any 
interposition on his part, been permitted to rush in " where 
nasfels fear to tread." 



lEISH STATE TRIALS. 385 

The religion of Mr. O'Connell teaches him two things — 
charity towards those who dissent from him in doctrine, and 
forgiveness of those who do him wrong. You recollect (it is 
from such incidents that we are enabled to judge of the char- 
acters and feehngs of men) — you remember to have heard in 
the com^se of the evidence frequent reference made to Sir 
Bradley King. The unfortunate man had been deprived of his 
office, and all compensation was denied him. He used to 
stand in the lobby of the House of Commons, the most desolate 
and hopeless looking man I ever saw. The only one of his 
old friends that stuck to him was Baron Lefroy. But the 
Baron Lefroy had no interest with the government. Mr. 
O'Connell saw Bradley King, and took pity on him. Bradley 
King had been his fierce pohtical, almost his personal antago- 
nist. Mr. O'Connell went to Lord Althorpe, and obtained for 
Bradley King the compensation which had been refused him. 
I remember having read a most striking letter addressed by 
Su' Abraham Bradley King to Mr. O'Connell, and asked him 
for it„ He could not at first put his hand upon it ; but, while 
looking for it, he mentioned that soon after the death of the 
old Dublin alderman, an officer entered his study, and told 
him that he was the son-in-law of Sir Abraham, who had, a 
short time before his death, called him to his bedside, and 
said : " When I shall have been buried, go to Daniel O'Connell, 
and tell him that the last prayer of a grateful man was offered 
up for him, and that I implore heaven to avert every peril 
from his head." Mr. O'Connell found the letter ; you will allow 
me to read it : 

" Baebett's Hotel, Spring Garden, 4tli Aug., 1832. 

"My Deab Sib: — The anxious wish for a satisfactory termination of 
my cause, which your continued and unwearied efforts for it have ever 
indicated, is at length accomplished ; the vote of compensation jaassed 
last night. 

" To Mr. Lefroy and yourself am I indebted for putting the case in 
the right light to my Lord Althorpe, and for his lordship's consequent 
candid and straightforward act, in giving me my just dues, and thus re- 
storing myself and family to competence, ease, and happiness. 

"To you, sir, to whom I was early and long iDolitically opposed— to 
you, who nobly forgetting this continued difference of opinion, and who, 
rejecting every idea of party feeling or party spuit, thought only of my 



386 SELECT SPEECHES OF EICHARD LALOK SHEIL. 

distress, and sped to succor and support me, how can I express my 
gratitude ? I cannot attempt it. The reward, I feel, is to be found 
only in your own breast, and I assure myself that the generous feelings 
of a noble mind Avill cheer you on to that prosperity and happiness 
which a discriminating Providence holds out to those who protect the 
helpless, and sustain the falling. 

" For such reward and happiness to you and yours my prayers shall 
be offered fervidly, while the remainder of my days, passing, I trust, 
in tranquillity, by a complete retirement from public life, and in the 
busom of my family, will constantly present to me the grateful recol- 
lection of one to whom I am mainly indebted for so desirable a closing 
of my life. Believe me, my dear sir, with the greatest respect and truth, 
your faithful servant, Abkaham Bkadley King. 

" To Mk. Daniel O'Connell, Esq., M. P." 

You may deprive him of liberty — ^you may shut him out 
from the face of nature, you may inter him in a dungeon, to 
which a ray of the sun never yet descended ; but you never 
will take away from him the consciousness of having done a 
good and a noble action, and of being entitled to kneel down 
every night he sleeps, and to address to his Creator the divin- 
est portion of our Redeemer's prayer. The man to whom that 
letter was addressed, and the son of the man to whom that 
letter was addressed, are not guilty of the sanguinary intents 
which have been ascribed to them, and of this they " put them- 
selves upon their country." Rescue that phrase from its 
technicalities — let it no longer be a fictitious one ; if we have 
lost our representation in the parhament, let us behold it in 
the jury bos, and that you participate in the feelings of mil- 
lions of your countrymen let your verdict afford a proof. 

But it is not to Ireland that the aching sohcitude with which 
the result of this trial is intently watched, will be confined. 
There is not a great city in Europe in which, upon the day 
when the great intelligence shall be expected to arrive, men will 
not stop each other in the public way, and inquire whether 
twelve men upon their oaths have doomed to incarceration the 
man who gave liberty to Ireland ? Whatever may be your ad- 
judication he is prepared to meet it. He knows that the eyes 
of the world are upon him — and that posterity — whether in a 
jail or out of it — will look back to him with admhation ; he is 
almost mdifferent to what may befaU him, and is far more soli- 
citous for others at this moment than for himself. But I — at 



lEISH STATE TEIALS. 387 

the commencement of wliat I have said to you — I told 3^011 
that I was not unmoved, and that many mcidents of my pohti- 
cal Hfe, the strange alternations of fortune through which I 
have passed, had come back upon me. But now the bare pos- 
sibihty at which I have glanced, has, I acknowledge, almost 
unmanned me. Shall I, who stretch out to you in behalf of 
the son the hand whose fetters the father has struck off, live 
to cast my eyes upon that domicile of sorrow, in the vicinity of 
this great metropolis, and say, " 'Tis there they have immured 
the Liberator of Ireland with his fondest and best beloved 
child ?" No ! it shall never be ! You will not consign him to 
the spot to which the Attorney-General invites you to surren- 
der liim. When the spring shall have come again, and the 
winter shall have passed — -when the spring shall have come 
again, it is not through the windows of a prison-house that the 
fatiier of such a son, and the son of such a father, shall look 
upon those green hills on which the eyes of many a captive 
have gazed so wistfuUy in vain ; but in their own mountain 
home again they shall listen to the murmurs of the great At- 
lantic ; they shall go forth and inhale the freshness of the 
morning air together ; " they shall be free of mountain soli- 
tudes ;" they will be encompassed with the loftiest images of 
liberty upon every side ; and if time shall have stolen its sup- 
pleness from the father's knee, or impaired the firmness of his 
tread, he shall lean on the child of her that watches over him 
from heaven, and shall look out from some high place far and 
wide into the island whose greatness and whose glory shall be 
forever associated with his name. 

In your love of justice — in your love of Ireland — ^in your 
love of honesty and fair play I place my confidence. I ask 
you for an acquittal, not only for the sake of your country, but 
for your own. Upon the day when this trial shall have been 
brought to a termination, when, amidst the hush of pubhc ex- 
pectancy, in answer to the solemn interrogatory which shall 
be put to you by the officer of the court, you shall answer, 
" Not guilty," with what a transport will that glorious nega- 
tive be welcomed ! How wiU you be blessed, adored, worship- 
ped ; and when retiring from this scene of excitement and 
of passion, you shall return to your own tranquil homes, how 



388 SELECT SPEECHES OF RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 

pleasurably will you look upon your children, in the conscious- 
ness that you will have left them a patrimony of peace by 
impressing upon the British cabinet, that some other measure 
besides a state prosecution is necessary for the pacification of 
your country ! 



THE IKISH STATE TEIALS. 

SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, FEBRUARY 22, 1844. 



I DID not rise last night at the conclusion of the speech of 
the Attorney-General for Ireland, for two reasons. The first 
was, that that speech did not terminate until nearly twelve, 
and I despaired of engaging the attention of the House at 
so late an hour ; in the next place, I was anxious that the 
right honorable and learned gentleman should afford me an 
opportunity of looking at the report of the case in which I 
was engaged fifteen years ago, to which he has thought it 
judicious to advert. I wished to look at that report for the 
purpose of vindicating myself from what I regard as a very 
serious charge. I applied to the right honorable gentleman 
for the report, and he had the goodness at once to give it to 
me. This House must have been under the impression that 
I packed a jury, and that it was exclusively Roman Catholic. 
The House must have thought that I exercised the preroga- 
tive vested in me by the Crown, with the sanction of the law 
ofiicers, for the purpose of placing in the jury-box twelve men, 
my own co-rehgionists, and the co-rehgionists of the j)erson 
for whose death the prosecution was instituted. 

The right honorable gentleman said that he was present on 
that occasion ; I think he will admit the truth of my assertion, 
that of my conduct in the course of that prosecution the at- 
torney and counsel for the prisoner did not complain, and the 
regular counsel for the Crown did not intimate that any fault 
was to be found with my conduct. In order to obtain a mixed 



lEISH STATE TEIALS, 389 

jury, I was under the necessity, as tlie prisoner cliallenged 
every Catholic, to set aside Protestants, until I could obtain 
the rehgious combination which I desired to effect. It may 
be said that I gave the Cathohcs a majority of one on the 
jury ; but when you recollect that unanimity was required for 
a conviction, you will at once perceive that a preponderance 
of one was of no consequence. If the Irish Attorney-General 
had followed my example in the state prosecutions, and out of 
the common panel had allowed five Cathohcs to remain on 
the jury, we should not have impeached his verdict. 

The Attorney-General has brought against me a very se- 
rious charge — he said that where a man was on his trial for 
his life, I acted a most censurable part. His book refutes 
him. I find in it a report of my speech ; and in order to prove 
that I did not hunt down the defendant with a bloodhound 
sagacity, I hope I shall be forgiven if I read one or two pas- 
sages, which will show the House the spirit in which the prose- 
cution was conducted. I hope the House wiU Hsten to this 
- self -vindication, if not with interest at least with indulgence ; 
and I must say that I never saw an occasion on which that 
feeling of the House of Commons was more strongly mani- 
fested than it had been last night, in hstening to a speech of 
the right honorable and learned gentleman, distinguished for 
abihty, and, let me add, for moral courage. The following is 
the commencement of the speech made by me in the case to 
which the Attorney-General refers : 

' ' I am counsel in a case which the gentleman to whom the Attorney- 
General habitually confides the enforcement of the law have permitted 
me, at the instance of the persons interested in the prosecution, to con- 
duct. I trust that I shall not abuse the license which has been afforded 
me. I feel that I am invested with a triple trust. The first is that 
which I owe my client, for whom I do not ask for vengeance, but for 
that retribution for which the instincts of nature make in the bosom of 
a parent their strong and almost sacred call. My client is the mother 
of the boy for whose death the prisoner at the bar stands arraigned. I 
owe the next duty to Mr. Pearse himself. If I am asked in what par- 
ticular I am bound to him, I answer that I cannot avoid entertaining for 
him that sentiment of commiseration which every well-minded man will 
extend to one who may be reaUy innocent of a crime, the imputation of 
which is itself a misfortune ; and I do assure you (he wiU permit me, I 
hope, to extend the assurance to himself) that it is with melancholy that 



390 SELECT SPEECHES OF RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 

I raise my eyes and see liim occupying the place where guilt and misery- 
are accustomed to stand. To him I owe it as an obhgation that I should 
not abuse the advantage of delivering a statement to which his counsel 
cannot reply. The scriptural injunction inscribed above that seat of 
justice, admonishes me that I ought not to make any appeal to your 
passions against a man whose mouth is closed, and to whose counsel 
the right of speaking, by an equally cruel and fantastic anomaly, is 
refused by the law. ' Aperi os tiium, ?>iuto,' is written there in golden 
characters, not only to suggest to your lordship the duty of a judicial 
interposition on behalf of the silent, but also to warn the advocate not 
to avail himself in any merciless spirit of his forensic prerogative against 
the man whom the law has stricken, dumb. I shall make it superfluous 
on the part of his counsel to produce evidence in favor of his character 
— he is a man of worth and honor, and until the fatal event for which 
he stands indicted, has borne a reputation for peculiar kindness of heart. " 

After stating the facts I concluded thus : 

" At the outset of my statement I expressed myself in praise of the 
defendant, and, as I advance to a conclusion, I pause for an instant to 
reiterate my panegyric. He has been, I repeat it, up to the time of this 
incident, a humane and well-conducted man. Let him have the full 
benefit of this commendation. If it shall appear that under circumstances 
which constitute a necessity, and in obedience to the instinct of self- 
preservation he exclaimed ' fire !' then I am the very first to call on you 
to acquit him." 

This is not the language of a man actuated by the fierce 
zeal of a relentless prosecutor ; I think it far less vehement 
than the charges of judges which we occasionally hear in 
Ireland. At the conclusion of the evidence, I told the judge 
that I thought that no case for charging the defendant with 
murder had been made out: I do think that the Attorney- 
General, in reverting to a trial which took place fifteen years 
ago, has not acted with ingenuousness, and I am convinced 
that in the opinion of the House I have freed myself from tlie 
imputation that I did not exercise the prerogative of the 
Crown with the intent attributed to me ; and if the right hon- 
orable gentleman had followed the example which I gave him 
on that occasion — if, in the constitution of the jury in Dublin, 
he had taken care that there should be five Roman Catholics 
and seven Protestants upon it — nay, if he had allowed even 
two, or one Roman Cathohc upon that jury, I think he would 



lEISH STATE TEIALS. 391 

liaye taken not only a more merciful but a more judicious 
course than tliat wliicli lie did adopt. 

The jury that sat in Dublin on the late trial was composed 
of twelve Protestants, and the House has not yet been apprised 
of some circumstances connected with their selection. Eight 
of those jurors voted against Mr. O'Connell at the several elec- 
tions at which that honorable gentleman was candidate for 
the city of Dublin. I do not mean to say that they had not a 
most perfect right to do so, or that because they had voted 
agamst him they ought of necessity to have been set aside by 
the Crown, or that they were unfit to exercise the duties of 
jurors in his case ; but we have first the fact of every Eoman 
Catholic on the jury list being set aside, and then we have a 
jury of persons admittedly hostile to him selected. 

There was a controversy last night respecting Mr. Thomp- 
son. A doubt was entertained as to the fact whether he had 
seconded a resolution at a corporation meeting. I beheve the 
fact is beyond all doubt. The resolution was to this effect : 
" That this meeting will support and maintain, by every means 
in its power, the Legislative Union between Great Britain and 
Ireland." 

There was another gentleman of more marked politics — Mr. 
Faulkner. It will be found in Saunders's News Letter of the 
14:th of February, 1840, that at a meeting of Protestants, con- 
vened by the Lord Mayor in pursuance of a resolution of the 
Common Council, and held in the King's Room at the Man- 
sion House, a Mr. Jones is reported to have said : " I call on 
the meeting by every consideration to stand by their princi- 
ples, and above all, to maintain the Protestant ascendency in 
church and state," and then followed loud and long-continued 
cheering, with shouts of "no surrender," and "one cheer 
more." Mr. Faulkner, who was one of the jury, proposed the 
third resolution, and that resolution was this : " That this 
meeting views with deep alarm the bill introduced into parlia- 
ment which proposes to interfere with the municipal corpora- 
tions of Ireland, and which transfers the rights of Protestants 
to the Eoman Catholic party in Ireland." And on another 
occasion, in a speech of his, reported in Saunders's News Let- 
ter of the 13th of April, and also in the Evening Mail, Mr. 



392 SELECT SPEECHES OF RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 

Faulkner called upon tlie meeting to uphold the Protestant as- 
cendency in church and state, and gave the charter toast. 
Some Mend asked what was the charter toast ? and Mr. 
Faulkner said, " I mean the glorious and immortal memory of 
the great and good King William." That gentleman ought to 
have been struck off. I think the House, when it considers 
the facts of the case — when it looks to the variety of the cir- 
cumstances connected with the case, will consider these f ac ts 
to be material in determining whether the jury were legiti- 
mately selected? Mr. O'Connell might have begun his speech 
to the jury in the words of the unfortunate Lewis : "I look for 
judges, but I behold none but accusers here." 

I turn to the circumstances connected with the prosecution : 
the Attorney-General has overlooked many incidents which he 
ought to have stated and which he ought to have known would 
not be kept back. You have obtained what you regard as a 
victory over the leader of the Catholic people. That victory has 
been obtained by you through the instrumentality of a Protes- 
tant jury. If it was fairly won, I am free to acknowledge that 
it is not unnaturally followed by that ministerial ovation in 
which the Secretary for the Colonies and the Secretary for the 
Home Department have not thought it indecorous to indulge ; 
but if that victory has been unfairly won — if, while you adhere 
to the forms of law, you have violated the principles of justice ; 
if a plot was concocted at the Home Office, and executed in 
the Queen's Bench ; if, by an ostensible acquiescence in mon- 
ster meetings for nine months, you have decoyed your antago- 
nists into your toils ; if foully or fortuitously (and whether 
fortuitously or foully the result is the same) a considerable 
fi-action of the jury list had been suppressed ; if you have tried 
the Liberator of the L'ish Catholics with a jury of exasperated 
Protestants ; if justice is not only suspected, but comes tainted 
and contaminated from her impure contact with authority — 
then, not only have you not a just cause for exultation, but 
your successes are of that sinister kind which are as fatal to the 
victors as to the vanquished — which will tarnish you with an 
ineffaceable discredit, and will be followed at last by a retribu- 
tion, slow indeed, but, however tardy, inevitably sure. I have 
presented a double hypothesis to the House. Let us see to 



IRISH STATE TRIALS. 393 

wliich of the alternatives the facts ought to be applied. I 
shall be permitted, in the first instance, to refer to an obser- 
vation made by the Secretary for Ireland in reference to my- 
self. The noble lord said : 

" He must now advert to some tiling ■whicli had fallen from a member 
of that House out of doors regarding Chief Baron Brady, and Mr. An- 
thony Blake. It had been observed by Mr. Shell, that an insult had 
been offered to the Catholics of Ireland because those gentlemen had not 
been summoned to a meeting of the council. He believed Chief Baron 
Brady was a Protestant. But let that pass. He took on himself the re- 
sponsibility of not summoning those gentlemen to the council. He 
thought that the measure determined on was the deliberate act of govern- 
ment, and he did not, therefore, think it proper to ask the opinion of 
political opponents." 

"What I said was this : 

" A circumstance occurred connected with the proclamation which is 
not undeserving of note. It has always been the usage in this country, 
(Ii-eland) to summon every member of the Privy Council. Upon this 
occasion, the Chief Baron, although hving in the neighborhood of Dub- 
lin, was not summoned, and Mr. Blake, a Roman CathoUc, who lives in 
Dublin, was not summoned. He was appointed to the office of Chief 
Eemembrancer by a Tory government. He had been the intimate friend 
of Lord Wellesley, a great Conservative statesman. He had never taken 
any part in any violent proceedings, but he was not summoned upon this 
occasion, although summoned upon every other, to the Privy Council ; 
while the recorder of the city of Dublin, by whom the jury list was to be 
revised, and in whose department an accident of a most untoward kind 
had happened, was summoned to the council whence the proclamation 
went forth." 

That was what I said, and I take advantage of this oppor- 
tunity to add, that if Mr. Blake had been at the Privy Council 
on Friday, he would have urged his associates not to delay 
the posting of the proclamation until Saturday, but would 
have told them, that, without any long recitals, immediate 
notice should be given to the people of the determination of 
the government. Notice of the Clontarf meeting was given for 
three weeks. It was to have been held upon Sunday. On the 
preceding Friday the council assembled. On that day the 
proclamation ought to have been prepared and posted. It did 
not appear until Saturday afternoon, and the country is in- 



394 SPEECHES OF RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 

debtee! to Mr. O'Connell, if upon an unarmed multitude an ex- 
cited soldiery was not let loose. The proclamation was 
obeyed. With that obedience you ought to have been con- 
tented. The monster meetings were at an end ; but you had 
previously determined to prosecute for a consj)iracy, and for 
that purpose you lay in wait for nine months, and that you did 
the proclamation itself affords a proof. The proclamation re- 
cites : 

" Whereas meetings of large numbers of persons have been akeady 
held in different parts of Ireland, under the like pretence, at several of 
which meetings, language of a seditious and inflammatory nature has 
been addressed to the j)ersons there assembled, calculated and intended 
to excite disaffection in the minds of her Majesty's subjects, and to 
bring into hatred and contempt, the government and constitution of the 
country, as by law established ; and whereas, at some of the said meet- 
ings, such seditious and inflammatory language has been used by per- 
sons," etc. 

If this statement be true, why did you not long before indict 
the individuals by whom those seditious speeches were de- 
livered ? Why did you not prosecute the newspapers by 
which inflammatory paragraphs had been almost daily pub- 
lished, for a period of nine months ? The motive was ob- 
vious. It was your purpose — your deliberate and long medi- 
tated purpose to make Mr. O'Connell responsible for har- 
angues which he had never spoken, and for pubhcations which 
he had never read. I content myself with giving a single 
instance, which will afford, however, a perfect exempHfication 
of the whole character of your proceedings. A Cathohc priest 
published an article in the Pilot newspaper, upon " The Duty 
of a Soldier." He signed his name, James Power, to that 
article. He was never prosecuted — he was never threatened ; 
he has escaped with perfect impunity ; but that article was 
given in e\idence against Daniel O'Connell, by whom it does 
not appear that it was even ever seen. Such a proceeding 
never was instituted in this country — such a proceeding, I 
trust in God, never will be instituted in this country — for Eng- 
lishmen Avould not endure it ; and this very discussion will tend 
to awaken them to a sense of the peril to which they are 
themselves exposed. 



IRISH STATE TRIALS. 395 

Does not tlie question at once present itself to every body, 
if that seditious language was employed for so long a period 
as nine months, why did you not prosecute it before ? Why 
did you not prosecute such an article as this which I hold in 
my hand, and which was published so far back as the first of 
April, 1843 ? You might have proceeded by criminal infor- 
mation or indictment, for the publication of a poem in the 
Nation newspaper, on which her Majesty's Attorney-General 
entered into a somewhat lengthened expatiation in addressing 
the jury, and declared it to be a poem of a most inflammatory 
character. I allude to verses entitled, " The Memory of the 
Dead." 

"Who fears to speak of Ninety-eiglit ? 

"Wlio blushes at the name ? 
When cowards mock the patriot's fate. 

Who hangs his head for shame ? 
He's all a knave, or half a slave, 

Who slights his country thus ; 
But a true man, like you, man, 

WiU fill your glass with us. 

" We drink the memory of the brave, 

The faithful and the few — 
Some He far off beyond the wave, 

Some sleep in Ireland too ; 
All — all are gone — but still lives on 

The fame of those who died ; 
All true men, like you, men, 

Remember them with pride. 

"Some on the shores of distant lands 

Their weary hearts have laid, 
And by the stranger's heedless hands 

Their lonely gi-aves were made. 
But though their clay be far away 

Beyond the Atlantic foam — 
In true men, like you, men, 

Their spirit's still at home. 

"The dust of some is Irish earth ; 

Among their own they rest ; 
And the same land that gave them birth 

Has caught them to her breast ; 
And we will pray that from their clay 



396 SELECT SPEECHES OF KICHAED LALOR SHELL. 

Full many a race may start 
Of true men, like you, men, 
To act as brave a part. 

*' Tliey rose in dark and evil days 

To right tlieir native land ; 
They kindled here a living blaze 

That nothing shall withstand. 
Alas ! that Might can vanquish Right — 

They fell and passed away ; 
But true men, like you, men, 

Ai-e plenty here to-day. 

" Then here's their memory — may it be 

For us a guiding light, 
To cheer our strife for liberty, 

And teach us to unite. 
Through good and ill, be Ireland's still, 

Though sad as theirs your fate ; 
And true men, be you, men, 

Like those of Ninety-eight." 

No man in tlie court, who heard tliis poem recited by the 
right honorable gentleman in the most emphatic manner, "will 
deny that it produced a great effect on the jury. The Attor- 
ney-General stated that this was but a single specimen of the 
entire volume, and that it very much exceeded in violence the 
productions of the same character in the year 1797. If the 
description is true, this poem having been published on the 
first of April, and a series of compositions, in prose and verse, 
of the same kind, having appeared for several successive 
months, does not every man who hears me ask, why it was 
that proceedings were not taken for the j)unishment of the 
persons by whom such articles were published, and for the 
prevention of offences to which such evil effects were attri- 
buted. My answer is this — ^you had determined to prosecute 
for a conspiracy, and you connived at meetings and pubHca- 
tions of this class. You allow these papers to proceed in their 
career, to run a race in sedition, and to establish a complete 
system for the excitement of the pubhc. You did not prose- 
cute the authors of the articles, or then' publishers, at the 
time they were published. You afterwards joined in the de- 
fence the editors of three newspapers, and you gave in evidence 



IRISH STATE TRIALS. 397 

against Mr. O'Connell every article published in 1843. Was 
that a legitimate proceeding ? Has there been a precedent in 
this country of such a proceeding ? Has there been an in- 
stance of a man indicted for a conspiracy, being joined with 
these editors of newspapers, and of the articles of those news- 
papers being given in evidence against him ? You might tell 
me that the mode of proceeding was legitimate, if there were 
no other mode of punishing the editors of those newspapers. 
But was there no other mode ? Could not those pubhcations 
have been stopped ? Could not the channels by which sedi- 
tion was circulated through the country have been closed up ? 
Therefore, we charge yau with having stood by — (I adopt the 
expression of the Attorney- General) with having stood by, 
and with having, if not encouraged, at least permitted very 
strong proceedings to be adopted by the popular party ; when 
you thought your purpose had been obtained, you then fell on 
the man whom you had enclosed within your toils. 

I come now to the observations of the Attorney-General re- 
garding Mr. Bond Hughes, and I confess myself to be not a 
little surprised at them. He said that Mr. Bond Hughes had 
been denounced as a perjurer, and spoke of us as if we had 
painted him in colors as black as those in which Roman Cath- 
olic members of parliament are occasionaDy held up to the 
public detestation ; but he kept back the fact that Mr. Bond 
Hughes did make two signal mistakes in his information, and 
which he himself acknowledged to be mistakes, which before 
Mr. Bond Hughes was examined did produce no ordinary ex- 
citement. Not one word did the Attorney-General say in re- 
ference to a most remarkable incident in these trials. 

The facts stand thus : — Mr. Bond Hughes had sworn in his 
information that he saw Mr. Barrett at two meetings in Dub- 
lin. It was of the utmost importance to the Crown to fix 
Barrett, in order to imphcate him with Mr. O'ConneU. Mr. 
Bond Hughes sees Mr. Barrett at Judge Burton's chambers, 
and turning to Mr. Bay, the chief clerk of the Crown Solici- 
tor, informs Mr. Ray that he was mistaken with respect to Mr. 
Barrett, and that he had not seen him at the Dublin meetings. 
He suggests to Mr. Ray that something should be done to 
correct his misajDprehension. Ray says nothing. Bond 



398 SELECT SPEECHES OF RICHARD LALOR SHELL. 

Hughes tlien applies to the Crown Sohcitor himself, to Mr. 
Kemmis, and represents to him the painful predicament in 
which he is placed ; Mr. Kemmis says nothing. Bond Hughes 
accompanies Mr. Kemmis to his house, and no rectification of 
tact signal mistake is made. Mr. Bond Hughes stated all 
this at the trial, which the Attorney-General, although he went 
mto exceedingly minute details, entirely forgot to mention. It 
is quite true that Mr. O'Connell at the trial acquitted Mr. 
Bond Hughes, but I leave it to the House to determine how 
far Mr. Kemmis should be relieved from blame. But lest you 
should think I am varnishing, or impeaching wantonly, the 
character of this immaculate Crown-Solicitor — you who charge 
us with tampering with Mr. Magrath, a man at this moment 
in the employment of the Recorder — I will read to you the 
statement of Mr. Bond Hughes, in which the Attorney-Gen- 
eral said not a word, because, I suppose, he thought it not at 
all relevant. Probably he supposed it to be a work of super- 
erogation to set the pubhc right with respect to any unfortu- 
nate misapprehension of Mr. Bond Hughes. The following is 
the evidence he gave : 

"Turn to Monday, tlie 9th of October — I mean the meeting in 
Abby-Street. Can you enumerate the persons present of the traver- 
sers ? — There were i^resent Mr. John O'Connell, Mr. Daniel O'Connell, 
Mr. Steele, the Rev. Mr. Tyrrell, Dr. Gray, Mr. Dafify, and Mr. Ray. 

" Then Mr. JBarrett was not amongst them ? — He was not. 

" Then I presume you did not see at that meeting Mr. Barrett ? — No. 
I made a mistake in saying he was there. 

*' You made that mistake on a previous day, not this day ? — ^I made the 
mistake on the occii-sion I refer to, and I corrected it as soon as I p ossi- 
bly could. 

" Then Mr. Barrett was not iDreseut ? — He did not deliver a speech 
upon the occasion ? — He did not. 

" The Solicitor-General has not asked jon about a dinner at the Ro- 
tunda. Were you there in youi* cajDacity as a reporter ? — I was. 

"I believe then I may assume as a fact that Mr. Barrett was not at 
that dinner ? — No, he Avas not there. 

" Of course he made no speech at the dinner ? — No, he did not. 

" Somebody else made a sj)eech for him ? — I was misinformed. 

"You mistook some one else for Mr. Barrett on the second occasion ? 
— ^I did, and I corrected the error as soon as I possibly could. 

"I think you stated, in answer to a question, that in justice to 



IRISH STATE TEIALS. 399 

yourself, you felt it your duty to correct tlie mistake at tlie earliest 
period you could ? — Yes. 

" Were you at the house of Judge Bartou when the informations were 
to be sworn ? — I was. 

"Did you see Mr. Barrett there ? — I did. 

"Did you, on that occasion, depose to the infoi'mations ? — No ; I did 
that on a prior occasion. I had sworn to the affidavits, and I made an 
amended affidavit on the second occasion. 

" Did I understand you to say that you corrected that mistake about 
Mr. Barrett on a subsequent occasion ? — I did not. 

" Were you present at the occasion Avhen Mr. Barrett was held to bail 
upon the informations previously sworn against him ? — I was. 

"And you saw him subscribe the recognizances ? — ^I did. 

' ' Did you then and there correct the mistake ? — ^I did, on the instant. 

" Oh, I mean as to the name of Barrett ? — Yes ; I told Mr. Ray and 
Mr. Kemmis. 

"Were they there attending on the part of the Crown ? — Yes ; they 
were. 

" Did you speak to Mr. Kemmis on the subject ? — ^No, he was engaged 
taking the informations, but immediately after we got out of the room I 
communicated it to Mr. Eay. 

"Let us have no mistake here. I suppose you do not mean Mr. Eay, 
one of the traversers ? — No ; I mean Mr. Eay, the managing clerk of Mr. 
Kemmis. 

"And did you, before you left the house of the judge, apprise these 
two jpersons of the mistake ? — I did, as we were leaving the house. I 
said I had a doubt about Mr. Barrett. 

" When did you say that ? — ^I said it when we were leaving the judge's 
chamber. 

"What did Mr. Kemmis say ? — I spoke chiefly to IVIr. Eay. 

" What did Mr. Kemmis say ? — I do not recollect. 

" How far was it from the judge's house ? — As we were going through 
Eildare Street. 

"Before you came to Mr. Kemmis's house ? — Yes. 

" Cannot you recollect what Mr. Kemmis said on that occasion?— I 
cannot. 

" Did he say it was too late to correct the mistake ? — He did not. 

"Did he make no observation ? — I do not remember. 

" And there it was left ? — There it was left. 

" Now you mentioned the matter to Mr. Eay. Was it in Judge Bur- 
ton's chamber ? — It was in the passage, as we were leaving the room. 

" Mr. Barrett was then in the house ? — He was ; we all left about the 
same time. 

" What did you say ? — That I had been mistaken with regard to Mr. 
Barrett, and I doubted whether he had been at the Eotunda or Calvert's 



400 SELECT SPEECHES OF EICHAED LALOR SHEIL. 

Theatre ; that I hail heard his name mentioned, but was mistaken as to 
his identity. 

"What did Mr. Eay say ?— I do not remember what he said. 

"Very extraordinaiy that you should not recollect what was said on so 
important an occasion. Did not Mr. Bay return ?— No. 

"And no further steps were taken by you? — I thought when I had 
put them in possession of the mistake, that I had done all that was ne. 
cessary. I did not think the question of identity would have been left to 
me. 

"You had no doubt about the mistake ? — I was satisfied, as soon as I 
saw him, that he was not the person. 

" How long was it after the mistake about Mr. Tierney that the mis- 
take was corrected ? — ^In about three days afterwards. 

"That was merely a mistake about the christian name ? — Yes. 

"The other mistake remained uncorrected. Did you apprise Mr. 
Barrett of it ? — No ; I thought I had done all that was necessary when 
I had apprised the officers of the Crown of it. 

Great stress is laid bj the Attorney-General on the sworn 
and unsworn statements of Mr. Kemmis. He told the Attor- 
ney-General this, and he told the Attorney-General that, but 
he did not rectify the errors in Mr. Bond Hughes' affidavit. 
Now, I think the House must wonder that a person like the 
Crown-Solicitor should have been guilty of a sin of omission 
such as I have described ; and in the nest place, what is more 
extraordinary, I think the House must be not merely surprised, 
but astonished, that the Attorney-General, when he made it a 
matter of accusation against Mr. O'Connellthat Bond Hughes 
was a subject of imputation, and had been calumniated, did 
not state that Bond Hughes had been mistaken, and had ac- 
tually supplicated the Crown-Solicitor to rescue him from his 
difficulty. I wonder if Mi'. Kemmis mentioned it to the At- 
torney-General himself ? Did he so, or did he not ? Oh, 
last night you thought, that the Attorney-General had made 
out a triumphant case. [Loud cheers from the opposition, 
met by counter cheers from the other side.] Do you consider 
this a fitting matter for exultation? [Conservative cheers re- 
newed.] I must say, I cannot enter into your pecuhar views, or 
appreciate the excellence of Tory ethics. [Loud opposition 
cheering.] If these things be to you " tidings of great joy," 
I should be loath to disturb your self-complacency. I pass 
from a topic upon which I have said enough. No further 



lEISH STATE TEIALS. 401 

comments are required ; but let it be remembered, tliat tliose 
gentlemen who charge us with the corruption of Mr. Magrath, 
who sought — to use a rather vulgar phrase — to turn the ta- 
bles upon us by a somewhat clumsy expedient — have them- 
selves, in the transaction I have mentioned, adopted the course 
I have described, and respecting which it is necessary for me 
to say one word more. But to proceed Ibo the other facts of 
the case : — The bills are found. The names of the witnesses 
on the back of the indictment are demanded by the defen- 
dant, that was a reasonable demand. In this country, united 
with Ireland — and I hope you will extend to Ireland the same 
principles and habits of liberty by which you are governed — 
in this country the practice has uniformly been to furnish the 
names of the witnesses on the back of the indictment. Am I 
not right ? The honorable and learned Attorney- General for 
England will do me the favor to correct me if I am mistaken. 
The honorable and learned gentleman intimates by gesture, 
that it is the practice in this country. We applied for the 
names of the witnesses ; we received a peremptory refusal. 
You asked for a trial at bar, you wish to have four judges. 
One of those judges was Mr. Justice Perrin. When it was 
convenient, the right honorable and learned Attorney- Gen- 
eral rehed upon the unanimity of the court, but when they dis- 
agreed he barely glanced at it. 

Attokney-Genekal, (for Ireland). — The judges were unani- 
mous in their judgment. 

Me. Sheil. — They allowed the Chief Justice to charge the 
jury ; they concurred with the Chief Justice in his view of the 
law. But do you not think any attention is to be paid to 
their dissent. If from their harmony you deduce consequences 
so valuable, from their discord are not some inferences also to 
be drawn ? It is the practice to give the names of the wit- 
nesses in England. Judge Perrin declared that he thought 
that in Ireland also it was a matter of right to give those 
names. That was a solemn decision upon the point. Judge 
Burton, an Enghshman, with some remnant left of the feeling for 
which his countrymen are distinguished, said, he thought that 
although it was not a matter of right, it would be judicious on 
the part of the Crown to give the names. Mr. Whiteside, tlie 



402 SELECT SPEECHES OF KICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 

eloquent counsel for Mr. O'Connell, at tlie conclusion of the 
case, made a most reasonable suggestion. The Attorney-Gene- 
ral resisted it, on the ground that it would introduce a new prac- 
tice. 

I think that the right honorable and learned Attorney-Gen- 
eral, when he went into all those minute details of that part of 
the case yesterday, would have done right had he mentioned 
the opinion of Mr. Justice Burton, the decision of Mr. Justice 
Perrin, and the offer made by Mr. Whiteside on behalf of the 
defendant. Let the House bear in mind, and let the country 
bear in mind, that an application never resisted in this coun- 
try — admitted by the honorable and learned Attorney-General 
for England to be always granted as a matter of right — was 
by her Majesty's Attorney-General for Ireland, God knows 
for what reason, peremptorily rejected. I admit that the right 
honorable and learned Attorney- General agreed to the post- 
ponement of the trial upon two grounds — the first, that time 
was required to prepare a proper defence, as it obviously was 
when it was remembered evidence had to be given regarding 
forty-one meetings on behalf of the Crown ; and on the sec- 
ond ground, that there were but twenty-five Catholics upon 
the panel for 1843, while it was perfectly manifest that a much 
larger number of Catholic jurors ought to have been upon the 
special jury list. But I deny that the court refused the apph- 
cation. My impression, on the contrary, was that the court 
determined to grant the application. It was obvious that one 
of the judges at least was so disposed. But let me not be 
mistaken. I do not mean to say that that was distinctly 
stated by the court ; what I say is this — Judge Burton ex- 
pressed liis astonishment that there were only twenty -five 
Catholics on the jury list, and when that surprise was ex- 
pressed, the Attorney-General, having against him an u-resis- 
tible case, agreed to the postponement of the trial, with the 
view to give the parties time to prepare their defence, a course 
he could not avoid, and also in order that the case should not 
be tried before a most erroneous panel. 

I do not wish to deny the merit of the right honorable and 
learned Attorney-General ; but had he insisted upon going at 
once to trial with a panel admitted to be utterly imperfect, 



lEISH STATE TRIALS. 403 

and denounced by the right honorable and learned Kecorder 
himself as most imperfect, surely an imputation would then 
have rested upon him far stronger than that which at this 
moment attaches to him, and, in my opinion, not without 
reason. 

I come to the suppression of a portion of the jury hst. It 
is right that the House should be apprised that counsel were 
employed on behalf of the Eepeal party and on behalf of the 
Conservative party, when the Eecorder was going through the 
parochial Hsts, and that every name was a subject of as much 
contention as a vote at an election. The Recorder's court 
became the arena of the fiercest political contention. But I 
will begin by declaring that in the adjudication of the paro- 
chial Usts the Recorder acted with the most perfect fairness, 
and I have no hesitation in saying that I beheve he would 
rather that his right hand should wither than use it in an in- 
famous mutilation of the jury hst. I entirely acquit him of 
impurity of motive. But, having made this statement, he will 
forgive me for saying that I do think it was his duty to have 
personally superintended the ultimate formation of the jury 
list, and if he had superintended it the mutilation of the jury 
list would not have taken place. He complained that he had 
been made the object of the vulgar abuse of hired counsel. 
He once belonged to the band of mercenaries himself, and 
might have spared the observation. But I do not think it 
either vulgar or vituperative to state that it would have been 
better if he had remained in Dubhn after his judicial duty had 
terminated, and when his ministerial duty had commenced. I 
admit as an excuse, almost as a justification, that he had great 
inducement to proceed to England ; for the Evening Mail, the 
recorder of great pubhc events, did not omit to watch the 
movements of the right honorable gentleman, and stated un- 
der the head of "Fashionable Intelligence," that the right 
honorable gentleman, having left Ingestre, proceeded to the 
residence of that distinguished statesman, who in aU likelihood 
was anxious to consult the Recorder on the proposed aug- 
mentation of the grant to the Education Board. And, may I 
be permitted to add, parenthetically, that upon the subject of 



40-i SELECT SPEECHES OF RICHAED LALOR SHEIL. 

education in Ireland a judicious tacitiu-nity has been observed 
by the right honorable gentleman. 

No one will suspect that the right honorable gentleman con- 
nived at, or had the slightest cognizance of any misdeeds which 
may have taken place in the transcription of the jury list. I 
entirely and cheerfully acquit the Attorney-General of every 
sort of moral imputation, but circumstances did take plsice in 
reference to this list, upon which Mr. Justice Perrin remarked 
in open court, that there were grounds for apprehending that 
something had occurred which was worse than accident. Mr. 
Kemmis made an affidavit in reply, but he did not contradict 
the fact. There never was an affidavit in reply to that of Mr. 
Mahony respecting the fact, although other affidavits were 
subsequently made, and ample opportunity for contradiction 
was afforded. 

What is the case made out against us by the other side ? 
But the Attorney-General more than insinuates, because Mr. 
Magrath is a Cathohc, the traversers, or some underlings con- 
nected with them, tampered with him. That is the charge 
made, without a possibiHty of sustaining it. Does the Re- 
corder assent to this assault on the character of a person still 
in his employment ? How frontless and how preposterous is 
the imputation ! Does any one believe, or can any one, by the 
utmost stretch.of creduhty, bring himself to believe, that the 
defendants would subtract a hst of one parish, containing fif- 
teen Catholic names, in order that not one of them might be 
caUed on the jury ? Yet this is the insinuation made by her 
Majesty's Attorney-General for Ireland. Is this a fair mode 
of proceeding ? When the Attorney-General makes a charge 
of this kind he ought to invest it with plausibility ; but the 
Attorney-General forgot that the defendants put the very 
charge in issue in their challenge ; why did he not venture to 
controvert it ? 

We are charged with corrupting a public officer whose live- 
hhood depended upon good faith in the performance of his 
duties — for what ? For the purpose of removing Roman 
Catholics from a panel to try Roman Cathohcs? Is that 
plausible ? Could such assertion be received by acclamation, 
except by gentlemen who had been affected by the eloquence 



IRISH STATE TEIALS. 405 

of the right honorable and learned gentleman ? The speech 
itself, indeed, of the right honorable and learned gentleman I 
was disposed to cheer, but when I found that cheers were 
raised for a man who was blasting the character of another, I 
was astonished both at the want of just feeling on the part of 
the Attorney- General, and that siich an accusation, destitute 
of proof, without plausibility, should be received with acclama- 
tions by a British assembly. "What took j)lace when the dis- 
covery was made of these missing names — I do not care 
whether they were sixty, or twenty-four, or twenty- seven ? 
The noble lord opposite very justly says they were balloted 
for, and selected by chance. That may be a good or bad 
principle, but the chances should be equal on both sides. The 
judge in Rabelais had a dice-box, and threw for the plaintiff 
and defendant ; but he did not load the dice. 

You remember the old practice in the House of Commons 
of balloting, when the names of members were put in glasses. 
Suppose, in such a case, the names of twenty-seven Tories 
were left out. Of course, honorable members, bound by their 
oaths, would be as incapable of doing anything unjust or im- 
proper as a Protestant jury, but what would the Tories say in 
such a case? Would they not say, give us a new ballot? 
Put the twenty-seven names back. But whether the jury list 
was lost, or whether it was stolen, there are two facts con- 
nected with it of no ordinary moment. When the juror's list 
was appHed for to the Becorder by the traversers, he expressed 
his anxiety to give it, if the Crown would consent to his doing 
so. He told us that he sent the clerk of the peace to the 
Crown solicitor, to ascertain whether the Crown would consent 
to that which the Recorder himself thought most reasonable 
and just. The Crown refused. The second fact is of the 
same character. An application was made to the sheriff for 
the list, and the Crown refused to consent. What was the re- 
sult ? That till the very last moment, the traversers' attorneys 
had no knowledge of the state of the jurors' book. A motion 
is made to quash the panel. An affidavit is sworn stating that 
twenty-seven Catholics were omitted. The SoKcitor-General 
makes an affidavit, and does not deny the fact. 

Judge Perrin declares that in his opinion, there is ground 



406 SELECT SPEECHES OF RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 

for sti'ong suspicion that foul dealing had been practised. An 
offer is made by the traversers to have the names restored to 
the paneh The Crown refused to agree. An offer is then 
made, and it clearly might have been done by consent, to have 
a new ballot, to put the omitted names into the ballot box, and 
that offer is also refused. The consent would have bound 
both parties, and that which the law contemplated would have 
been accomplished. The Attorney-General, notwithstanding 
that he professed to detail everything that had happened with 
the most scruj^ulous exactness, did not say a syllable about the 
challenge to the array. He talked of Pearse's case and Lord 
Hawarden's case, and fifty other cases, but not a word about 
the challenge : and for a very good reason, that Judge Perrin 
declared the challenge to be good, and the panel to be void. 
A challenge to the array takes place, and it is alleged in the 
challenge, and put in issue, that sixty names had been omitted 
from the jury hst, and that the omission was fraudulent and 
corrupt. That fact the Crown refused to try. The following 
are the words of part of the challenge : 

"And the said defendant further says, that a certain j)aper writing 
purporting to be a general list, made out from such several lists so cor- 
rected, allowed and signed as aforesaid, was illegally and fraudulently 
made out, for the purpose and with the intent of prejudicing the said 
defendant in this cause." 

What reason has the Attorney-General given for not joining 
issue on that important allegation — an allegation sustained by 
Judge Perrin's previous unequivocal expression of his opinion? 
It might have been tried at once by the officer of the court, 
but a demurrer was preferred. Now mark what happens. We 
put at issue two facts — the loss of the names most material — 
the fraud, still more. Was it not the duty of the Crown, un- 
der these circumstances, to have joined issue with us? If 
they had joined issue, there would have been an end to our 
objection ; and if the point had been decided against them, 
then, of course, the panel must have been altered, or some 
steps adopted. How did the court decide? Was the court 
unanimous ? Mr. Justice Perrin, who introduced the act into 
Ireland, which belonged to the Reform code of the right hon- 
orable baronet opj)Osite — Mr. Justice Perrin, who knew the 



IRISH STATE TEIALS. 407 

object of the act — who was familiar with all its details — by 
whom its machinery, so to speak, had been in part altered 
and adapted— Mr. Justice Perrin decided that the challenge 
was good. But government went to trial, one of the judges 
having declared that the source from which justice flowed had 
been corrupted. A learned friend suggests to me that a de- 
murrer always admits the fact, but I will be candid on that sub- 
ject. A demurrer admits the fact, for the purpose of argument 
only. I did not dwell upon that point, because it was in some 
sort a legal fiction. I- went to what was much more substan- 
tial. The Crown had the opportunity of ascertaining a fact oi 
the utmost materiahty ; the Crown shrunk from that investi- 
gation. You then went on with the case with the protest of 
one of the judges against you, and a verdict you have obtained 
by the intervention of a jury condemned by one of the judges 
who sat in that court. 

If aU of the judges were unanimous as to the abstract law, 
as stated by the Lord Chief Justice, they were not unanimous 
as to the verdict, because one of the judges condemned the 
panel which was the foundation of the verdict, and if the 
panel be shaken, the entire superstruction raised upon it must 
of course fall too. I come now to another portion of this case 
— the striking-off of Eoman Catholics from the jury. *But I 
see I am occupying the attention of the House at too great a 
length ; but it is a case of paramount importance. It is a 
case in which I was counsel, and, of course, took a very warm 
interest in it — it would be strange if I did not — and I believe 
I am, to a certain extent, better acquamted with the facts than 
others can be, and I conscientiously believe I have not stated 
anytliing that departs in the slightest degree from the facts. 
With respect to the striking-off of the Eoman Catholics, it is 
said by Mr. Kemmis that there were ten on the list of fortj- 
eight jurors. Now, eight of these ten I at once admit were 
properly struck off. I cannot for a moment pretend that eight 
members of the Repeal Association, or persons who were sub- 
scribers to its funds, ought to have been retained on • the jury. 
I could no more contend for it than you should contend that 
Mr. Sheriff Faulkner should have been upon the jury. But 
there were two names struck off who were Roman OathoUcs 



408 SELECT SPEECHES OF EICHAED LALOR SHEIL. 

but wlio were neither members of the Rej)eal Association nor 
subscribers to the Eepeal fund. Mark the affidavit of Mr. 
Kemmis ; -put it in the disjunctive — he beheved that the ten 
persons struck off the hst were either members of th e Eepeal 
Association, or had subscribed to its funds. Henrick is a Eo- 
man Cathohc ; what course had been taken about Henrick ? 
The noble lord the Secretary of State for the Colonies, who 
appears to know more about this part of the case than the 
Irish Attorney-General, told us that Henrick was considered 
to be a Protestant, and a Conservative. Who told him so ? 

Lord Eliot. — Mr. Kemmis. 

Mr. Sheil. — Mr. Kemmis did not swear it. It never was 
mentioned until this debate had commenced. You start a 
new case or new pretext every moment, and that new pretest 
is grounded on nothing better than an asseveration of his be- 
lief by the Crown-Solicitor regarding a fact, in reference to 
which he was most egregiously mistaken. Henrick was not a 
member of the Eepeal Association. He never subscribed to 
the Eepeal rent. He is a Eoman Catholic. It is sworn that 
he is. I requested my honorable friend, the member for the 
county of "Wexford, wdien this matter was in agitation, and 
who was acquainted with Henrick, to ask him two questions : 
first, jvhether he was a Eoman Catholic, and nest, whether he 
was a member of the Eepeal Association, or a suTbscriber to 
the Eepeal fund? The answer was, that he was a Eoman 
Catholic — that he was not a member of the Eepeal Associa- 
tion, and that he had never subscribed to its fund. But you 
now make a new case, and say that you thought he was a 
Protestant and a Conservative. 

Come to the case of Michael Dunne. You do not pretend 
that Dunne was either a member of the Eepeal Association, or 
a subscriber to its funds. But you beheved that he might 
have signed a requisition for a Eepeal meeting, though even 
that allegation is not positively made. But is there no dis- 
tinction between being a Eepealer and being a member of the 
Association ? Is there no distinction between being an advo- 
cate of free-trade and a member of the Anti-Corn-law League ? 
If Mr. Cobden, and Mr. Bright, and Mr. Yilliers, and the 
Globe newspaper, and the Morning Chronicle, were indicted 



IRISH STATE TRIALS. 409 

to-morrow for a conspiracy, would the Crown be justified in 
setting aside, as a Juror, every man who had signed a requisi- 
tion in favor of free-trade, or had signed a requisition in favor 
of the repeal of the Corn laws ? Or suppose that in 1831 the 
Tories had come into office, and had indicted the Whigs for 
conspiring to carry Reform by intimidation, for corresponding 
with the Birmingham Union, and. for " swamping the House 
of Lords," would there be no distinction made, in empanelling 
a jury to try those revolutionary delinquents, between an ad- 
vocate of reform, and a member of that seditious association 
commonly called Brooks's Club, in which I had once the good 
fortune of hearing a most eloquent speech delivered agamst 
the Duke of Wellington by a great orator, who, mounted upon 
a table through whose planks he almost stamped, poured out 
an incendiary harangue, amidst enthusiastic acclamation and 
rapturous applause. 

But let us go back to the jury. The panel was bad, and was 
so declared by the judges. You adopted the course requiring 
that every Roman Catholic should be struck off the hst. 
Would it not have been wise if the Crown had given its con- 
sent that some Roman Catholics should be left on the list ? I 
deny that if the Crown had consented to the formation of a 
new panel, there would have been any objection on the part of 
the traversers ; and in that case, if the traversers afterwards 
attempted to controvert the verdict, they would clearly have 
been stopped by their own proceedings. But suppose no con- 
sent had been given, was there not another expedient that 
might have been adopted ? Could not the rule for the special 
jury have been discharged ? 

The sheriff for the city of Dublin is a gentleman of the high- 
est respectability — Mr. Latouche. When the Municipal Bill 
was passing, you took the appointment of the sheriffs from the 
corporation. You left that appointment to the corporations in 
England. You did not take the appointment from cities here ; 
but when you came to deal with us, you took the appointment 
of the sheriff from cities, and vested it in the Crown ; because 
you Said that if the new corporations appointed the sheriffs 
they would be just as bad as the old. I do not say whether 
the course you took was right or wrong ; but when the Crown 



410 SELECT SPEECHES OF RICHAED LALOE SHEIL. 

assumed the right of appointing the sheriff, thej might most 
safely and vnselj have left to the sheriff the appointment of 
the jury in this case. You use the words " common jury," an 
expression, generally speaking, which means men selected 
from the inferior classes. Now, the jury that tried this case 
were, comparatively speaking, taken from the inferior classes. 
There were on it Protestant grocers, Protestant piano-forte 
tuners, and Protestant tanners. Perhaps it would have been 
better if persons of a higher class had been selected ; but I 
must admit, that there is one advantage in making the middle 
classes the dej)ositaries of political power, and that the middle 
classes are animated with as high a sense of honor and of duty 
as the lirst patricians m the land. I should never quarrel with 
the jury, if they had not been composed of political antago- 
nists. 

An expression was used by my right honorable friend, the 
member for the city of Edinburgh, which has strongly excited 
the ire of the Attorney-General for Ireland. My right honor- 
able friend had said that if there had been a common jury, the 
Attorney-General for Ireland would not have dared to set by 
the Eoman Cathohcs, whose names might be on the Hst. To 
this the Attorney-General for Ireland has rephed, " I would 
have dared ! " and certainly no one can deny his intrepidity. 
But what my right honorable friend meant was this — that the 
Crown, controlled by pubhc opinion — controlled, if not in Ire- 
land, at least in this country, by public opinion, acting under 
the coercion of British sentiment, would not have ventured 
upon an act at once so culpable, and so imprudent, as to strike 
off names of the highest respectability because they were Ro- 
man Catholics. Therefore, if you were sincere in the mani- 
festation of your desu-e that the Roman CathoHcs should be 
capable of acting on that jury, you had a very obvious mode 
of carrying your purpose into effect, and of realizing that de- 
sire ; for when you found the mistake on the panel by all the 
Roman Catholics being excluded, you might have got a com- 
mon jury, and in that case, the verdict would have been jinim- 
peachable, and all the controversy which has taken place, and 
all its consequences, and all the natural and inevitable irrita- 
tion, might have been avoided. Under these circumstances, is 



lEISH STATE TRIALS. 411 

it wonderful that in Ireland great excitement should have taten 
place ? Is it astonishing that the Eoman Catholics of Ireland 
should have felt indignant to a man on the subject ? Is it 
wonderful that great public meetings should have taken place 
in every district of the country, to take the subject into consid- 
eration ? Were these meetings called by factious men ? At 
the head of them stood Lord Kenmare, one of the advocates 
of the Union — a man of large possessions, of very ancient birth 
and a man highly allied in this country. That nobleman felt' 
that these proceedings were an insult offered to him ; he, there- 
fore, not for the purposes of partisanship, not to gratify any 
political passion, not from any predilection in favor of Mr. 
O'ConneU, signs a requisition to call a public meeting to com- 
plain of the course pursued by the Crown. 

There was another circumstance which gave an additional 
poignancy to the feelings of the Roman Cathohcs ; that cir- 
cumstance was this, and as the Attorney-General for Ireland 
thought it judicious on his part to advert to the course I pur- 
sued on a trial at Carrick-on-Suir, he will excuse me if I refer 
to something which concerns himself, and to an occasion on 
which he made himself most conspicuous in Ireland. I do not 
mention this for the purpose of malevolence — I bear no ill will 
to the right honorable gentleman^ — I have no motive for ill will 
— he never did me wrong ; and that that right honorable gen- 
tleman should have imagined that a conspiracy was formed 
against him at the bar, for the purpose of wounding his feel- 
ings and injuring his prospects, was a most unfortunate haUu- 
cination on his part. I beg, on my honor, to assure him that 
no such intention was ever entertained. But he is a pubhc 
man, and considering that in the management of the important 
duties it has imposed upon him he did not exhibit any great 
dehcacy towards others, he must expect that when his poHtical 
antagonists scrutinize his motives and his conduct, they will 
ask what manner of man this must have been, and what course 
has he pursued ? He last night alluded to my conduct at a 
trial which took place many years ago ; and he said, also, that 
he was sorry for what he had said at the meeting which he at- 
tended in 1837. As being contrite, he is to be forgiven. But 
when the Roman Cathohcs of Ireland come to compare the 



412 SELECT SPEECHES OF RICHARD lALOR SHEIL. 

course pursued by the Attorney-General, at the late trial in 
Dublin, with the opinions he had previously expressed, it was 
imjjossible that then- suspicion should not be confirmed that 
unfair dealings were practiced in their regard. 

The House is already aware of the course pursued by the 
right honorable gentleman upon the Education Question — a 
question upon which the Eecorder of Dublin took care to spare 
his right honorable friend, when he endeavored to escape from 
it. But the right honorable gentleman had distinguished 
himself still more upon another question. 

In the year 1837, a great Protestant meeting was held in 
Dubhn — sx3eeches and resolutions of the most violent character 
were made and passed at that meeting. One of the barristers 
who took xoart in those proceedings has been made Master in 
Chancery ; two of them have been made Judges, Lefroy and 
Jackson ; and the right honorable gentleman himself has been 
made Attorney-General by a government which professes to 
govern Ireland without reference to party. At that meeting 
a resolution was passed declaring that the Protestants of Ire- 
land were in as perilous a condition now, as they were in 1641, 
when the most frightful massacres of Protestants are said to 
have taken place. But what did the right honorable gentle- 
man say at that meeting ? He said that Roman Cathohcs m 
parhament had no regard to their oaths. That declaration, 
censurable as it was, was more manly than if he had dealt in 
insidious hints and despicable insinuations. But, surely, when 
the public functionary by whom that language was uttered 
caused ten Eoman Catholics to be struck off fi-om the special 
jury, it was impossible not to connect that proceeding with his 
former conduct — it was impossible not to attribute it to the 
most offensive motives. Meetings took place in almost every 
district in Ireland, and even the Roman Cathohcs of England 
were sthred into resentment. They are, to a man, opposed 
to the repeal of the Union. But this outrage to the feehngs 
of every Roman Cathohc in the empire they could not endure. 
When the First Lord of the Treasury came into office. Lord 
Shrewsbury addressed a letter to Mr. O'Connell, calling on 
him to support the present administration. But the blood of 
the Talbots had caught fire — the first earl in England de- 



lEISH STATE TKIALS. 413 

nounces tlie gross affront offered to the religion of that com- 
munity of which he is an ornament. The following letter Avas 
written by Lord Shrewsbury to Lord Camoys, on the occasion 
of the latter noble lord presiding at a meeting of English Cath- 
olics in the metropolis : 

"Alxon Towees, Feb. 6, 181i. 

"My Deak Lobd : — I regret extremely that circumstances -will not 
allow me to attend the meeting over which you are to preside to-morrow, 
as I was anxious for an opportunity of expressing my indignation, in 
common with yourself and many others, at the fresh insult offered to the 
Avhole Catholic population of these kingdoms, by the conduct of the law 
officers of the Crown in the preliminary proceedings on the interesting 
and important trials now taking place in Dublin. The Catholics appear 
to have been struck off the panel en masse, upon the ground that they 
were all Bepealers ; but while this fact is asserted on the one side, it is 
stoutly denied upon the other. In the absence of any positive evidence 
on the point, we are, I think, fully justified in the inference that, 
whether Eepealers or not, no Catholic would have been allowed to sit 
upon that jury, seeing that such determination would have been in perfect 
keeping with what has hitherto been the fixed policy of the present 
government in Ireland, to exclude Catholics from all share in the ad- 
ministration of public affairs, and while professing to do equal justice to 
all, refusing them every grace and right enjoyed by their Protestant 
fellow-subjects. The exceiitions are too trifling even to form the shadow 
of an argument. 

"But even presuming that the facts are upon their side, does it evince 
a spirit of justice in the government to discard every man who was 
known to be favorable to Repeal, and at the same time to leave upon the 
panel many who were notoriously Anti-Repealers, and who are now 
actually, sitting in judgment upon the traversers ? In either case, then, 
the first, principles of justice have been violated, and a gross insult of- 
fered to the people of Ireland ; and I am sorry that I have only been 
able to mark my reprobation of such conduct by signing the requisition 
for a meeting to express our common feelings upon the subject. 
I remain, my dear lord, 

Very truly and faithfully yours, 

Shkewsbtjky. 

'To THE Lobd Camoys." 

Is not the fact itself a monstrous one, that in a great 
Cathohc country, in the greatest State prosecution that has 
ever been instituted in that country, the Liberator of that 
country should be tried by an exclusive Jury marshalled in 
antagonism against him ? Strip the case of all those details 



414 SELECT SrEECHES OF BICHAKD LALOR SHEHi. 

upon which there has been so much controversy, look at that 
bare naked fact, and say whether it can be reconciled with 
the great principles of Catholic Emancipation? As far as 
trial by jury is concerned, Catholic Emancipation is repealed, 
and repealed in a spirit as preposterous as it is unjust. We 
are admitted to the Bench of Justice — that Bench of Justice 
which was adorned by a Catholic Chief Baron and a CathoUc 
Master of the Kolls ; we are admitted to the Imperial Senate, 
which I have at tliis mom,ent the honor of addressing ; we are 
admitted to the Treasury Board, to the Board of Admiralty, 
to the Board of Trade ; we are admitted to the Privy Council. 
But, admitted to the Bench; and admitted to the parliament, 
and admitted to the Treasury, to the Admnalty, to the Board 
of Trade, and to the Privy Council, we are driven from the 
Jury — we are ignominiously driven from the jury box, where 
a refuge has been supphed to that Protestant ascendency 
which you have re-mvested with all the most odious attributes 
of its most detestable domination. And yet the noble lord 
the Secretary for Ireland tells us that he is anxious for the 
impartial administration of justice ! 

At the last London election Mr. Baring was asked, by a 
formidable interrogator, whether he was favorable to free 
trade ? He answered that he was favorable to free trade in 
the abstract. But when he was asked whether he would vote 
for the repeal of the sliding scale, he said that was quite an- 
other question. And so it is with the noble lord. He is favor- 
able to impartial justice in the abstract. Ask him to admit a 
Eoman Catholic as a juror upon a state prosecution, and he 
exclaims, " Oh, that is quite another thing." I must, how- 
ever, admit, that I believed the noble lord to have erred from 
a certain infirmity of purpose, which, although lamentable, is 
not so reprehensible as the Yorkshire yeomanry authoritative- 
ness, and the Fermanagh fanaticism of my Lord de Grey. 

There is in Dublin a society called the Protestant Opera- 
tive Association. It exhibits in its characters the results of 
Conservative policy in Ireland. That Association presented 
an address to Lord de Grey immediately after the proclama- 
tion had been issued. In that address it stated that " the 
Sacrifice of the Mass is a blasphemous fable, and that a sys- 



IRISH STATE TRIALS. 415 

tern of idolatry unliappily prevails in our country." It sub- 
mits to the Lord Lieutenant that " we want in Ireland laws 
which shall have the effect of abohshing Popery." It calls for 
the suppression of the College at Ma^Tiooth ; the address, in 
short, is in keeping with another address from the same socie- 
ty in which the Oathohc religion is designated as a " God-dis- 
honoring, Christ-blaspheming, and a Bible-denying supersti- 
tion, whose climax is gross idolatry." Popery is called " the 
masterpiece of Satan." It states " there are idolaters upon the 
bench — idolaters on the judgment-seat." They conclude with 
a panegyric on the honorable member for Knaresborough, 
whose arrival in Dublin they announce as an event to be glad- 
ly anticipated by all Irish Protestants. The other day he 
read a speech attributed to me ; I acquit him of all blame, but 
that speech was not made by me, but by a person of the same 
name, resident in Thomas Street, Dublin. In the Annual 
Eegister the speech is given to me by mistake. This Protes- 
tant Operative Association, this natural product of your sacer- 
dotal institutions, having addressed the Lord Lieutenant in 
reference to the proclamation, what answer did he give ? Did 
he denounce — did he reprove contumely so wanton and so un- 
provoked ? Did he, as the representative of his sovereign, who 
charged him when he went to Ireland to govern the country 
with impartiality, and expressed to him her tender solicitude 
for the weKare of her Irish people, express the slightest con- 
demnation of the atrocious language which had been em- 
ployed in reference to the religion of seven eighths of the in- 
habitants of Ireland ? No, sir. But in his answer to the con- 
gratulations of these conspirators against the first principles 
of Christian charity, he expresses his " warm acknowledgments 
for the honors which they have conferred upon him, in the 
expression of their thanks for his conduct on a late occasion." 
Does the First Lord of the Treasury approve of this proceed- 
ing on the part of his " Lord Deputy of Ireland ?" The Secre- 
tary for the Home Department considers it as indiscreet, but 
as to the Secretary for the Colonies, as he, in all likehhood, 
sympathizes with the Protestant Operative Association, I beg 
to hand him their address to .Lord de Grey, as it will furnish 
admirable materials for his next " No Popery" speech. The 



416 SELECT SPEECHES OF EICHAED LALOR SHEIL. 

moral effect of the verdict will not be enhanced by the conduct 
of Lord de Grey, or by the speeches of the Secretary for flie 
Colonies, or the Secretary for the Home Department. That 
right honorable gentleman spoke of " convicted conspirators" 
not being able to upset the Established Church. Even if your 
verdict had been legitimately obtained, you should abstain 
fi'om such expressions. You should not give way to this inglo- 
rious exultation. You are an Enghshman, and you ought not 
to hit a man when he is down. 

As to the noble lord the Secretary for the Colonies, he never 
fails to apply a provocative to our resentments, and to verify 
what my friend Mr. Fonblanque says of his orations — " Every 
one of them is a blister of shiniag flies." I am sm-prised that 
the First Lord of the Treasury, knowing, as he must know, 
that so hot a horse is likely to bolt, allowed him to be entered 
for the race. He ought, at all events, if the noble lord was de- 
termined to speak, to have suggested to him, that as his gov- 
ernment of Ireland had not been peculiarly successful, to 
avoid the topics which are most hkely to add to the national 
irritation ; he ought to have admonished him not to make such 
a speech as in Canada would be likely to produce great irrita- 
tion amongst the large Catholic community of that important 
colony. Perhaps the Prime Minister did give him some such 
warning, and probably, Hke the L;ish Attorney-General, he 
promised to put a restraint on himself, and to extend his Con- 
servative habits to his temper. But once on his legs, all his 
good resolutions were forgotten, and he could not deny himself 
the luxmy of offering every Catholic in the house an affront in 
the Pharisaical homily wliich he dehvered on the oaths taken 
by Catholics in parhament. He read the oath — read it in ital- 
ics — he read it almost as well as the Chief Justice read the 
speech of Daniel O'Connell. He begged of us to examine our 
consciences, and to consider the awful obhgation which was 
imposed upon us. In giving us a lecture on perjury, he does 
not mean to offend us. Be it so ; but suj^pose that, in the 
spirit of retahatory gratitude, I were to give him a lecture on 
an offence of far inferior culpabihty, on political apostasy, and 
were to say — " My lord, I do not taean to offend you, but I en- 
treat you not to give way to the acrimonious feelings by which 



IRISH STATE TRIALS. 417 

tergiversation is habitually characterized ; don't play the fierce 
and vindictive renegade, for the sake of men with whom the 
partner of your conversion declared that it would be in the 
last degree discreditable to consort, and remember that ' sa7is 
changer ' is the motto attached to your illustrious name." 

I very much question whether the noble lord would consider 
these amiable suggestions as giving me any very peculiar title 
to his thanks. But there was something even more remarkable 
than his advice in reference to the Catholic oath in the 
speech of the noble lord. He was exceedingly indignant at 
the reflections on the Chief Justice in reference to whom deh- 
cacy forbids me saying anything, as he was " counsel on the 
other side," and insisted that a judge of the land ought not 
to be made the subject of criticism in this House ; yet when 
he was a Whig Cabinet Minister he did not exhibit this vir- 
tuous squeamishness, but thought Baron Smith, the father of 
the Irish Attorney-General, would give capital sport in a com- 
mittee of the House of Commons. He proposed an inquiry 
into the conduct of Baron Smith— an inquiry into the accuracy 
of the charge of Mr. Baron Smith. 

Lord Stanley. — No, I didn't. 

Mr. Sheil. — Didn't you? 

Lord Stanley. — No, I didn't. 

Mr. Sheil. — What! No vote of censure? 

Lord Stanley. — No. 

Mr. Sheil. — ^No motion for a committee? 

Lord Stanley. — No. 

Mr. Sheil. — Then, what was it? There was a motion I know 
made in this House for a committee to inquire into the con- 
duct of Mr. Baron Smith in charging the grand jury. 

Lord Stanley. — No. 

Mr. Sheil. — Yes, but there was. The Secretary for the 
Home Department perhaps can tell me, because he voted 
against the noble lord. The Secretary for the Home Depart- 
ment was shocked at such a proceeding, and my Lord Mont- 
eagle, whose nerves are better now, was shocked too. Upon 
that occasion the noble lord (Lord Stanley) and the Secretary 
for the Home Department were divided ; there was then only 
one star in the Gemini. But let me turn from the noble lord. 



418 SPEECHES OF RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 

wliose conduct and whose advice we hold in the estimate 
which they deserve, to the country to which he once said that 
he would give a lesson — and inquire how it is that you intend 
that the government of Ireland, for the fature, shall be carried 
on. Ireland is not to be ruled by force. Indeed ! It is to- 
be ruled through Protestant jurors, and Protestant charges, 
and Protestant jailers ; but Protestant jurors, and Protestant 
charges, and Protestant jailers, require that Protestant bayo- 
nets should sustain them, and that, with the discretion of the 
Home Office, the energy of the Horse Guards must be com- 
bined. 

But let me come to your specific measures. You have 
issued a landlord and tenant commission, composed exclusively 
of proprietors. You did not place upon it a Catholic bishop, 
or any other eminent ecclesiastic, having an intimate acquaint- 
ance with the sufferings of the poor. These commissioners 
are to fill up three or four folios of evidence, to prove to us, 
what every one of us already knows. The Home Secretary 
tells us, that he is inclined to render the landlord's remedy 
more compendious, but he ought to remember that Mr. Lynch, 
the master in Chancery, who is thoroughly acquainted with 
Ireland, a first-rate lawyer, and an excellent man, who has 
managed his own property with the most humane concern 
for his tenants, thought the remedy of the quarter-sessions 
preferable to an ejectment in the superior courts, because the 
costs in the superior courts are overwhelming, and the tenant 
purchases a little delay at a price utterly ruinous, and which 
deprives him of all chance of redeeming his land. 

The right honorable gentleman also informed us that he had 
a Eegistration Bill in liis thought ; I admit that the govern- 
ment are entitled to large praise for having thrown the Secre- 
tary of the Colonies overboard ; but why does not the right 
honorable gentleman inform us of his plan ? He will cut down 
the franchise with one hand, and extend it with the other ; 
but how will he extend it ? By the Chandos clause ; that is, 
he will discourage the granting of long leases, and he will 
create a mass of vassalage in times of tranquillity, and in 
seasons of political excitement he will create an open revolt, 
by which the whole country will be distracted. But what does 



IRISH STATE TRL\LS. 419 

he mean shall be done with regard to the Catholic Church 
and the Protestant Church — ^with regard to the church with a 
congregation and without a revenue, and the church with a 
revenue and without a congregation ? Will he grant glebe 
leases to the Catholic clergy, will he build Catholic houses of 
worship, will he augment Maynooth ? — On these subjects the 
government are silent, but it is intimated that with the 
revenues of the establishment no sacrilegious innovation shall 
be permitted to interfere, and that the Established Church 
shall bo maintained in the plenitude of its possessions, in a 
country in which two thirds of the Irish members are returned 
by Roman CathoKcs, in which Roman Catholics are masters 
of all the corporations in the south of Ireland, in which every 
day the Catholic millions are making a wonderful progress in 
wealth, in industry, in intelligence, in personal self-respect, 
and in individual determination. And why is the Church to be 
maintained in its superfluous temporalities ? Because we are 
told that it is founded in Christian Protestant truth. Be it 
so ; but permit me to inquire on which side of the Tweed in 
Great Britain Protestant truth is to be found ? On the north- 
ern bank it is impersonated in the member for Perth — in the 
member for Oxford on the south. It is Calvinistic in the 
north, Arminian in the south ; it is dressed in a black gown 
and a white band in the north ; in the south it is episcopally 
enthroned, mitred, and crosiered, and arrayed in all the pomp 
of pontifical attire. On the north it betrays its affinity to 
Geneva. On the south it exhibits a strong family resemblance 
to that Babylonian lady, toward whom, under the auspices ol 
Doctor Pusey, its filial affection is beginning to return. 

If I shall ever be disposed to recant the errors which have 
now continued for 1800 years, in order that, being permitted to 
assail the Irish Church from without, I may, as a Protestant, 
undermine it from within, perhaps the Secretary for the Home 
Department, who is a borderer, will teU me on which bank ol 
the Tweed the truth is to be discovered. But wherever it is 
to be found, it must be admitted that the Irish Church has not 
been very instrumental in its propagation. You have made 
no way in two centuries in Ireland, while Popery is every day, 
and in every way, upon the advance. The Catholic religion, 



420 SELECT SPEECHES OF EICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 

iudigenous to the mind of Ireland, has struck its root pro- 
foundly and widely in the belief and the affections of the peo- 
ple — it has grown beneath the axe, and risen in the blast — 
while Protestant truth, although preserved in a magnificent 
conservatory, at prodigious cost, pines like a sickly exotic, to 
which no natural vitality can be imparted, which by every 
diversity of expedient you have striven to force into freshness, 
and warm into bloom, in vain. But you may resolve, per fas 
aid oiefas, to maintain the abuses of the Church, but it is right 
that you should know, that among the Catholics of Ireland 
there exists but one opinion on the subject. 

You heard my honorable friend the member for Kildare — he 
is a gentleman of fortune and of birth, highly connected, and 
who has again and again refused to take the Kepeal pledge. 
He tells you that he is thoroughly convinced that an alteration 
in your establishment is required. A vast body of the Pro- 
testant Irish aristocracy entertain the same sentiment ; and 
even here, the supporters of a Conservative government can- 
not refrain from teUing you that a revision of the church can- 
not be long avoided. The honorable member for Wakefield, 
who was one of the vice-presidents, if I remember right, at 
the dinner given in 1838, to the first Lord of the Treasury, at 
the Merchant tailors'-haU, bore his important, although reluct- 
ant, testimony to the necessity of a change. That change is 
said to be against principle. But what an incongruity between 
your theory and practice : take, as an instance, the Canada 
clergy and reserves. The clergy reserves were appropriated by 
act of parliament, by one of the fundamental laws of the colo- 
ny, to the maintenance of the propagation of the Protestant 
religion. 

Before the revolt in Canada (that painful instrument of po- 
htical amelioration) we were told that the clergy reserves were 
set apart for sacred and inviolable purposes. But the Cana- 
dian insurrection produced one good result ; the Archbishop of 
Canterbury did no more than stipulate for a change of plirase- 
ology in an act of parhament, and the Protestant clergy 
reserves are at this moment applied, in part, to the sustain- 
ment and the diffusion of the Cathohc rehgion. The present 
Prime Minister, the secretary for the Colonies, the secretary 



IRISH STATE TRIALS. 421 

for the Home Department, the Bishop of London, all agreed 
to this momentous ahenation. The Bishop of Exeter alone 
stood by his colors ; he implored, he adjured the House of 
Lords in vain — he called on the bishops to remember their 
oaths, he poiated out the disastrous precedent which you were 
about to make. He was right — the inference is irresistible, the 
whole appropriation question is involved in the clergy reserves. 
But consider whether, even in your deahngs with the Irish 
Church, you have not acted in such a way as to render 
your position utterly untenable. By the Church Temporali- 
ties Act you abolished Irish Church rates. You thereby sub- 
tracted so much from the property of the church — ^you sup- 
pressed a certain number of bishoprics, why should you not 
suppress a corresponding number of benefices ? You do not 
want so many bishops — how can so many parsons be required 
by you ? But the Tithe Bill is a stiU stronger case. 

In 1831 the Catholic members asked nothing more than 
that you should apply the surplus of church property to char- 
ity and education. They never proposed to confiscate a fourth 
and give it to the Irish landlords. In 1835 that proposition 
was made by the present Secretary-at-war, then Secretary for 
Ireland. To the Tories the entire merit of originating that 
wild and "Wellingtonian measure exclusively belongs. But the 
gaUant officer, when Secretary for Ireland, proposed a bill by 
which one fourth of the tithe was confiscated and put into the 
coffers of the landlords — ^you would not ahenate church pro- 
perty — not you ; but with one blow you take away one fourth 
of their tithes from the church, and surrender the precious 
fragment to the Protestant landlords of Ireland. 

Your own conduct in reference to the Education Question is 
the strongest illustration of your own sense of the incompe- 
tence of the Irish Church to fulfill the duties of an establish- 
ment. In England, where you have an Established Church 
which teaches the religion of the people, you gave up the Fac- 
tory Bill ; you have perpetuated ignorance, and aU the vices 
which it engenders, rather than infringe on the sacerdotal pre- 
rogative of your establishment, which claims the tutelage of 
the nation's mind; while in Ireland you have stripped the 
church of all its privileges, and declared it to be unfit for one 



422 SELECT SPEECHES OF RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 

of its most important functions — the direction of the public 
mind ; nay, more, the Secretary for Ireland, who now thinks 
it politic to offer his homage to the clergy of the Established 
Church, with a sincerity of panegyric commensurate, I hope, 
with its exaggeration, denounced that clergy for their factious 
opposition to the Education Board. You have thus, by your 
own acts, pronounced a virtual condemnation of your Estab- 
lishment — that monster anomaly to which nothing in Europe 
is to be compared. Yes ; there is one analogy to be found to 
your sacerdotal institutions — there is one country in Europe 
in which your Irish pohcy has been faithfully copied. In a 
series of remarkable ukases the Emperor of aU the Eussias 
proclaims the eternal union between Poland and Russia, de- 
clares it to be the means of developing the great national ad- 
vantages of Poland, expresses his surprise that the Poles 
should be so utterly insensible to his benevolence, reprobates 
the malcontents by whom fanciful grievances are got upj and 
establishes the Greek Church as an excellent bond of connexion 
between the two countries. 

Is there a single argument that can be urged in favor of 
the English Church in Ireland which does not apply to the 
establishment of the Greek Church in Poland ? The fee-simple 
of Poland is now Russian. Property in Poland has been Tar- 
tarized, by very much the same process by which it has been 
Protestantized in Ireland. A Greek hierarchy will compensate 
for the absence of the nobility in Moscow and St. Petersburg, 
and it will be eminently conducive to pubhc usefulness, that a 
respectable Greek clergyman should be located, as a resident, 
in every parochial subdivision of Poland, with a living, in the 
inverse ratio of a congregation. Almost every year we have 
a debate in this house touching the wrongs of Poland, and an 
assurance is given by the right honorable baronet that he will 
use his best endeavors to procure a mitigation of the suffer- 
ings of Poland. I have sometimes thought, that in case Lord 
Aberdeen should venture on any vehement expostulation, which 
is not, however, very Ukely, Count Nesselrode might ask, 
whether Russia had not adopted the example of England 
towards Ireland ; whether, in Ireland, torrents of blood had 
not been poured out by your forefathers ; whether Ireland had 



, lEISH STATE TKIALS. 423 

not been put through a process of repeated confiscation; 
whether the laws of Russia were more detestable than your 
barbarous penal code ; and whether, to this day, you do not 
persevere in maintaining an ecclesiastical institution repugnant 
to the interests, utterly at variance with the creed, and abhor- 
rent to the feelings of a vast majority of the people ? Such, I 
think, would be the just reply of a Eussian statesman to my 
Lord Aberdeen ; and, since I have named my Lord Aberdeen, 
I gladly avail myself of the opportunity to express my unquali- 
fied approbation of his foreign policy. When the home office 
plays, in reference to Ireland, so belligerent a part, and when 
the Secretary of the Colonies, in speaking of Ireland, *' stiffens 
the sinews " and *' summons up the blood," and, I may venture 
to add, imitates the action of the tiger, nothing wiU become my 
Lord Aberdeen so much as " mild behavior and humility." 

Rightly did my Lord Ashburton, under his auspices, con- 
cede to America far more than America could plausibly claim. 
— Rightly will he relinquish the Oregon territory ; rightly has 
he endured the intrigues of the French Cabinet in Spain ; 
rightly did he speak of jilgiers as a "fait accomplV' Rightly 
will he abandon the treaties of 1831 and 1833, for the sup- 
pression of the slave trade ; but, after all, this prudential com- 
plaisance may be ultimately of httle avail ; for who can rely 
upon the sincerity of that international friendship, which rests 
on no better basis than the interchange of royal civilities? 
Who can rely upon the stability of that throne of the Barri- 
cades, which has neither legitimacy for its foundation, nor free- 
dom for its prop ? And if it falls, how fearful the consequences 
that may grow out of its ruins ! The First Lord of the Treas- 
ury will then have cause to revert to his speech of 1829, to 
which my honorable and learned friend the member for Wor- 
cester, so emphatically and so impressively adverted. The 
admonitions of the noble lord, the member for Sunderland, 
will then be deserving of regard. 

These topics are perilous ; but I do not fear to touch them. 
It is my thorough conviction that England would be able to 
put down any insurrectionary movement, with her gigantic 
force, even although maddened and frantic Ireland might be 
aided by calculating France. But at what a terrible cost of 



424 SELECT SPEECHES OF RICHAKD LALOR SHEIL. 

treasure and of life would treason be subdued ! Well might 
the Duke of Wellington, although famihar with fields of death, 
express his horror at the contemplation of civil war. War in 
Ireland would be worse than civil. A demon would take 
possession of the nation's heart — every feeling of humanity 
would be extinguished — neither to sex nor to age would mercy 
be given. The country would be deluged with blood, and 
when that deluge had subsided, it would be a sorry consola- 
tion to a British statesman, when he gazed upon the spectacle 
of desolation which Ireland would then present to him, that 
he beheld the spires of your Established Church still standing 
secure amidst the desert with which they would be encom- 



You have adjured us, in the name of the oath which we have 
sworn on the Gospel of God — I adjure you, in the name of 
every precept contained in that holy book — in the name of 
that rehgion which is the perfection of humanity — in the name 
of every obhgation, divine and human, as you are men and 
Christians, to save my country from those evils to which I 
point, but to avert them, and to remember, that if you shall be 
the means of precipitating that country into perdition, pos- 
terity will deliver its great finding against you, and that you 
will not only be answerable to posterity, but responsible to 
that Judge, in whose presence, clothed with the blood of civil 
warfare, it will be more than dreadful to appear. But God 
forbid that these evils should ever have any other existence, 
except in my own affrighted imaginings, and that those visions 
of disaster should be embodied in reality. God grant that the 
men to whom the destinies of England are confided by their 
sovereign, may have the virtue and the wisdom to save her 
from those fearful ills that so darkly and so densely lower upon 
her. For my own part, I do not despair of my country ; I do 
not despair of witnessing the time when Ireland will cease to 
be the battle-field of faction ; when our mutual acrimonies will 
be laid aside ; when our fatal antipathies wiU be sacrificed to 
the good genius of our country. 

Within the few days that have elapsed since my return to 
England, I have seen enough to convince me, that there exists 
amidst a large portion of the great British community, a sen- 



IRISH STATE TRIALS. 425 

timent of kindliness and of good feeling towards Ireland. I 
have seen proofs that Englishmen have, with a generous promp- 
titude, if they have felt themselves wronged, forgiven the man 
who may have done them wrong. That if Englishmen, noble 
and high-minded Englishmen, do but conjecture that injustice 
has been done to a pohtical antagonist, swayed by their pas- 
sion for fair play, they will fly to his succor, and with an instinct 
of magnanimity, enthusiastically take his part. I do trust 
that this exalted sentiment will be appreciated by my country- 
men as it ought to be ; and that it may be so appreciated, and 
that it may lead to a perfect rational reconciliation, and that 
both countries, instead of being bound by a mere parchment 
union — a mere legal Hgament, which an event may snap — shall 
be morally, pohtically, and socially identified, is the ardent 
desire of one who has many faults, who is conscious of numer- 
ous imperfections, but who, whatever those imperfections may 
be, is not reckless of the interests of his country ; is devotedly 
attached to his sovereign ; and, so far from wishing for a dis- 
memberment of this majestic empire, offers up a prayer, as fer- 
vent as ever passed from the heart to the hps of any one of 
you, that the greatness of that empire may be imperishable, 
and that the power, and that the affluence, and that the glory, 
and that, above aU, the liberties of England may endure for 



reiiiwpwv'rrii,i|ii' mm 




s^i^s*-^ 



SPEECHES OP THE 

RIGHT HON. JOHN PHILPOT CURUAN. 



MEMOIR OF JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN. 



John Philpot Cukean, the greatest Irish orator of the last cen- 
tury, was born in , at the httle town of Newmarket, in the north- 
west corner of the comity of Cork, where his father was seneschal 
of the manor and petty judge. 

A wild, lively boy, he owed his best early training to his pastor, 
Eev. Mr. Boyse, who sent him to Middleton school, whence he 
passed to Trinity, storing his mind with classic lore, which he ever 
loved, but never paraded, though at times a well-timed quotation 
fell from his lips. 

He entered Trinity in 1767, and contrived to graduate with 
honor in spite of a fondness for scrapes. Then giving up his first 
choice, the church, he went to London and entered the Middle Tem- 
ple. "While preparing for the bar, he married his cousin. Miss 
Creagh, and in 1775 began his career in the profession. 

It will hardly be believed, but is nevertheless a fact, that this 
great orator and lawyer rose slowly, and at first showed a great 
diffidence and awkwardness, that gave little token of future emi- 
nence. 

The case of Father Neale against Lord Doneraile in 1780, at 
once raised him to distinction and popularity. The aristocrat had 
brutally beaten a venerable priest for refusing to violate the rules 
of his church. Every lawyer on the circuit refused to act as the 
poor priest's counsel, but Curran volunteered, and tried the case 
with such scathing eloquence and remarkable ability that the jury 
forgot their bigotry and gave a verdict. His language cost him a 
duel, but this only increased his fame. 

He entered the Irish parliament in 1783, as member for Kilbeg- 
gan, and continued in that body till its close. Yet his true field 
was the bar ; his eloquence was for the forum, not for the sen- 
ate. His speeches on State Trials, in which his whole soul was 
aroused, give the fullest and fairest ideas of his power. And the 



430 MEMOIR OF JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN. 

defence of prisoners in 1798, was not without its perils. Threats, 
of violence were frequent ; but Curran was undaunted. " You 
may assassinate me," he exclaimed, when the bayonets were lev- 
elled at his breast, " but you shall not intimidate me." He could 
not always save the victim from the doom pronounced in secret 
councils of government, for the trials were a mere mockery of jus- 
tice, but Curran's speeches, models of eloquence and imdying ex- 
hortations to justice and honor, will, to the judgment day, stand as 
the fearful indictment of English rule in Ireland. 

After the Union, Curran devoted himself to his private practice, 
but domestic affliction saddened his later years ; his elevation to 
the Mastership of the Rolls, a judicial office in the Court of Chan- 
cery, was a mistake, and he resigned in 1814. He had two years 
previous been defeated in Newry in a parliamentry election, and 
thus retired from political and legal life. 

In October, 1817, he was struck with apoplexy, and died on the 
14th, and is buried in Glasnevin cemetery. " A companion unri- 
valled in sympathy and wit ; an orator whose thoughts went forth 
like ministers of nature, with robes of Ught and swords in their 
hands ; a patriot, who battled best when the flag was trampled 
down, and a genuine earnest man, breathing of his chmate, his 
country and his time." 



SPEECHES OF THE 

El&HT HON. JOHN PHILPOT CURMN. 



SPEECH ON PENSIONS, MAECH 13, 1786. 

I OBJECT to adjourning this bill to tlie - first of August, be- 
cause I perceive in tlie present disposition of the House, that 
a proper decision will be naade upon it this night. We have 
set out upon our inquiry in a manner so honorable, and so 
consistent, that we have reason to expect the happiest success, 
which I would not wish to see baffled by delay. 

"We began with giving the full affirmative of this House, that 
no grievance exists at all ; we considered a simple matter of 
fact, and adjourned our opinion : or rather we gave sentence 
on the conclusion, after having adjourned the premises. But 
I do begin to see a great deal of argument in what the learned 
baronet has said ; and I beg gentlemen will acquit me of 
apostasy, if I offer some reasons why the bill should not be 
admitted to a second reading. 

I am surprised that gentlemen have taken up such a foolish 
opinion, as that our constitution is maintained by its different 
component parts, mutually checking and controlling each 
other ; they seem to think, with Hobbes, that a state of nature 
is a state of warfare; and that, like Mahomet's coffin, the 
constitution is suspended between the attraction of different 
powers. My friends seem to think that the Crown should be 
restrained from douig wrong by a physical necessity ; forget- 
ting, that if you take away from man aU power to do wrong, 



432 SILECT SPEECHES OF JOHN PHILPOT CUEEAN. 

you at the same time take away from him all merit of doing 
right: and, by making it impossible for men to run into 
slavery, you enslave them most effectually. But if, instead of 
the three different parts of our constitution drawing forcibly in 
right lines, in different directions, they were to unite their 
power, and draw all one way, in one right line, how great 
would be the effect of their force, how happy the direction of 
this union ! The present system is not only contrary to math- 
ematical rectitude but to pubhc harmony ; but if, instead of 
privilege setting up his back to oppose prerogative he were 
to saddle his back, and invite prerogative to ride, how com- 
fortably they might both jog along ! and therefore it dehghts 
me to hear the advocates for the royal bounty flowing freely 
and spontaneously, and abundantly, as Holywell in Wales. If 
the- Crown grant double the amount of the revenue in pensions, 
they approve of their royal master, for he is the breath of 
their nostrils. 

But we shall find that this complaisance, this gentleness be- 
tween the Crown and its true servants, is not confined at 
home ; it extends its influence to foreign powers. Our mer- 
chants have been insulted in Portugal, our commerce inter- 
dicted ; what did the British lion do ? Did he whet his tusks ? 
did he bristle up, and shake his mane ? did he roar ? No ; no 
such thing , the gentle creature wagged his tail for six years 
at the court of Lisbon ; and now we hear fi'om the Delphic 
oracle on the treasury bench, that he is wagging his tail in 
London to Chevalier Pinto, who, he hopes soon to be able 
to tell us, will allow his lady to entertain him as a lap-dog ; 
and when she does, no doubt the British factory will furnish 
some of their softest woolens, to make a cushion for him to 
lie upon. But though the gentle beast has continued so long 
fawning and couching, I beheve his vengeance will be great as 
it is slow ; and that posterity, whose ancestors are yet unborn, 
will be surprised at the vengeance he will take. 

This polyglot of wealth, this museum of curiosities, the pen- 
sion list, embraces every link in the human chain, every de- 
scription of men, women, and children, from the exalted ex- 
cellence of a Hawke or a Eodney, to the debased situation of 
the lady who humble th herself that she may be exalted. But 



SPEECH ON PENSIONS. 433 

tlie lessons it inculcates form its greatest perfection ; it teacli- 
eth, that sloth and vice may eat that bread which virtue and 
honesty may starve for after they have earned it. It teaches 
the idle and dissolute to look up for that support which they 
are too proud to stoop and earn. It directs the minds of men 
to an entke reliance on the ruling power of the state, who feed 
the ravens of the royal aviary, that cry continually for food. 
It teaches them to imitate those saints on the pension hst that 
are like the lihes of the field — they toil not, neither do they 
spin, and yet are arrayed like Solomon in his glory. In fine 
it teaches a lesson, which, indeed, they might have ^learned 
from Epictetus, that it is sometimes good not to be over vir- 
tuous ; it shows, that in proportion as our distresses increase, 
the munificence of the Crown increases also ; in proportion as 
our clothes are rent, the royal mantle is extended over us. 

Notwithstanding that the pension list, like charity, covers a 
multitude of sins, give me leave to consider it as coming home 
to the members of this House — give me leave to say, that the 
Crown, in extending its charity, its liberaht'y, its profusion, 
is laying a foundation for the independence of parhament ; for 
hereafter instead of orators or patriots accounting for their 
conduct to such mean and unworthy persons as freeholders, 
they will learn to despise them, and look to the first man in 
the state ; and they will, by so doing, have this security for 
their independence, that while any man in the kingdom has a 
shilhng, they will not want one. 

Suppose at any future period of time the boroughs of Ire- 
land should decline from their present flourishing and prosper- 
ous state — suppose they should fall into the hands of men who 
would wish to drive a profitable commerce, by having mem- 
bers of parliament to hire or let ; in such a case a secretary 
would find great difficulty, if the proprietors of members should 
enter into a combination to form a monoply ; to prevent wliich, 
in time, the wisest way is to purchase up the raw material, 
young members of parliament, just rough from the grass; and 
when they are a little bitted, and he has got a pretty stud, per- 
haps of seventy, he may laugh at the slave merchant ; some of 
them he may teach to sound through the nose, Hke a barrel 
organ ; some in the course of a few months, might be taught 



434 SELECT SPEECHES OP JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN. 

to cry, "Hear! hear!" some, "Chair! chair!" upon occasion 
— though those latter might create a Httle confusion, if the 
•were to forget whether they were calling inside or outside of 
those doors. Again, he might have some so trained that he 
need only pull a string, and up gets a repeating member ; and 
if they were so dull that they could neither speak nor make 
orations, (for they are different things,) he might have them 
taught to dance, 'pedibus ire in sententia. This improvement 
might be extended ; he might have them dressed in coats and 
shirts all of one color ; and of a Sunday, he might march them 
to church two by two, to the great edification of the people, 
and the honor of the Christian religion ; afterwards, like an- 
cient Spartans, or the fraternity of Kilmainham, they might 
dine all together in a large hall. Good heaven ! what a sight 
to see them feeding in public, upon public viands, and talking 
of public subjects, for the benefit of the public ! It is a pity 
they are not immortal ; but I hope they will flourish as a cor- 
poration, and that pensioners will beget pensioners to the end 
of the chapter. 



SPEECH ON THE TEIAL OF AKCHIBALD HAMIL- 
TON ROWAN, 29th JANUARY, 1794. 



Gentlemen of the jury, when I consider the period at which 
this prosecution is brought forward ; when I behold the extra- 
ordinary safeguard of armed soldiers resorted to, no doubt for 
the preservation of j)eace and order ;- when I catch, as I can- 
not but do, the throb of public anxiety which beats from one 
end to the other of this hall ; when I reflect on what may be 
the fate of a man of the most beloved personal character, of 
one of the most respectable families of our country — ^himself 
the only individual of that family ^I may almost say of that 
country — who can look to that possible fate with unconcern ? 

* A few moments before Mr. Curran entsred into his client's defence, a guard 
was brought into the Court-house by the sheriff (Gifford). 



TRIAL OF ARCHIBALD HAIHILTON ROWAN. 435 

Feeling, as I do, all these impressions, it is in the honest sim- 
plicity of my heart I speak, when I say, that I never rose in a 
court of justice with so much embarrassment as upon this oc- 
casion. 

If, gentlemen, I could entertain a hope of finding refuge for 
the disconcertion of my mind in the perfect composure of yours 
— if I could suppose that those awful vicissitudes of human 
events, which have been stated or alluded to, could leave your 
judgment undisturbed, and your hearts at ease, I know I should 
form a most erroneous opinion of your character. I entertain 
no such chimerical hope — I form no such unworthy opinion. 
I expect not that your hearts can be more at ease than my 
own — I have no right to expect it ; butQC have a right to call 
upon you, in the name of your country, in the name of the liv- 
ing God, of whose eternal justice you are now administering 
that portion which dwells with us on this side of the grave, to 
discharge your breasts, as far as you are able, of every bias of 
prejudice or passion, that if my chent be guilty of the offence 
charged upon him, you may give tranquiUity to the pubhc, by 
a firm verdict of conviction ; or, if he be innocent, by as firm a 
verdict of acquittal ; and that you will do this in defiance of 
the paltry artifices and senseless clamors that have been re- 
sorted to, in order to bring him to his trial with anticipated 
conviction^) And, gentlemen, I feel an additional necessity in 
thus conjuring you to be upon your guard, from the able and 
imposing statement which you have just heard on the part of 
the prosecution. I know well the virtues and talents of the 
excellent person who conducts that prosecution ;* 1 know how 
much ho would disdain to impose on you by the trappings of 
office ; but I also know how easily we mistake the lodgment 
which character and eloquence can make upon our feehngs, for 
those impressions that reason, and fact, and proof, only ought 
to work upon our understandings. 

Perhaps, gentlemen, I shall act not unwisely, in waiving any 
further observation of this sort, and giving your minds an op- 
portunity of growing cool and resuming themselves, by coming 
to a calm and uncolored statement of mere facts, premising 

* The late Lord Kilwarden, then Attorney-General Wolfe 



436 SELECT SPEECHES OF JOHN PHILrOT CUEEAN. 

only to you, that I have it in strictest injunction from my cli- 
ent, to defend him upon facts and evidence only, and to avail 
myseK of no technical artifice or subtlety that could witlidraw 
his cause from the test of that inquiry which it is your pro- 
Aince to exercise, and to which only he wishes to be indebted 
for an acquittal. 

In the month of December, 1792, Mr. Eowan was arrested 
on an information, charging him with the offence for which he 
is now on his trial. He was taken before an honorable per- 
sonage now on that bench, and admitted to bail.* 

He remained a considerable time in this city, soliciting the 
present prosecution, and offering himself to a fair trial by a 
jury of his country. But it was not then thought fit to yield 
to that solicitation ; nor has it now been thought proper to 
prosecute him in the ordinary way, by sending up a bill of in- 
dictment to a grand jury. 

I do not mean by this to say that informations ex-officio are 
always oppressive or unjust ; but I cannot but observe to you, 
that when a petty jury is called upon to try a charge not pre- 
viously foimd by the grand inquest, and supported by the 
naked assertion only of the King's prosecutor, that the accu- 
sation labors under a weakness of probability which it is diffii- 
cult to assist. If the charge had no cause of dreading the 
hght — if it was likely to find the sanction of a grand jury — it is 
not easy to account why it deserted the more usual, the more 
popular, and the more constitutional mode, and preferred to 
come forward in the ungracious form of an ex-qfficio informa- 
tion. 

If such a bill had been sent up and found, Mr. Rowan would 
have been tried at the next commission ; but a speedy trial 
was not the wish of his prosecutors. An information was filed, 
and when he expected to be tried upon it, an error, it seems, 
was discovered in the record. Mr. RoAvan offered to waive it, 
or consent to any amendment desired. No, that proj^osal 
could not be accepted : a trial must have followed. That in- 
formation, therefore, was withdrawn, and a new one filed ; that 

* The Honorable Justice Downes, afterwards Lord Downes, and Chief Jus- 
tice of the King's Bench. 



TEIAL OF ARCHIBALD HAMILTON EOWAN. 437 

is, in fact, a third prosecution was instituted upon the same 
charge. This last was filed on the 8th day of last July. 

Gentlemen, these facts cannot fail of a due impression upon 
you. You will find a material part of your inquiry must be, 
whether Mr. Eowan is pursued as a criminal, or hunted down 
as a victim. It is not, therefore, by insinuation or circuity, but 
it is boldly and directly that I assert, that oppression has been 
intended and practiced upon him, and by those facts wliich I 
have stated, I am warranted in the assertion. 

His demand, his entreaty to be tried, was refused, and why ? 
A hue and cry was to be raised against him ; the sword was 
to be suspended over his head ; some time was necessary for 
the public mind to become heated by the circulation of artful 
clamors of anarchy and rebellion, these same clamors which, 
with more probability, but not more success, had been cu'culat- 
ed before through England and Scotland. In this country, 
the causes and the swiftness of their progress were as obvioiis 
as their folly has since become to every man of the smallest ob- 
servation. I have been stopped myself with — " Good God, 
sir, have you heard the news ?" " No, sir, what ?" " Why 
one French emissary was seen travelling through Connaught 
in a post-chaise, and scattering from the window, as he passed, 
httle doses of political poison, made up in square bits of pa- 
per ; another was actually surprised in the fact of seducing 
our good people from their allegiance, by discourses upon the 
indivisibihty of French robbery and massacre, wliich he 
preached in the French language, to a congregation of Irish 



Such are the bugbears and spectres to De raised to warrant 
the sacrifice of whatever little public spirit may remain 
amongst us. But time has also detected the imposture of 
these Cock -lane apparitions ; and you cannot now, with your 
eyes open, give a verdict, without asking your consciences this 
question : — Is this a fair and honest prosecution ? is it brought 
forward with the single view of vindicating public justice, and 
promoting public good ? And here let me remind you, that 
you are not convened to try the guilt of a libel, affecting the 
personal character of any private man. I know no case in 
which a jury ought to be more severe, than where personal 



438 SELECT SPEECHES OF JOHN PHILPOT CUERAN. 

calumny is conveyed tlirougli a vehicle whicli ought to be con- 
secrated to public information. Neither, on the other hand, 
can I conceive any case in which the firmness and the caution 
of a jury should be more exerted, than when a subject is pros- 
ecuted for a libel on the state. The peculiarity of the British 
constitution, (to which, in its fuUest extent, we have an un- 
doubted right, however distant we may be from the actual en- 
joyment,) and in which it surj)asses every known government 
in Europe, is this, that its only professed object is the general 
good, and its only foundation, the general will ; hence the peo- 
ple have a right, acknowledged from time immemorial, fortified 
by a pile of statutes, and authenticated by a revolution that 
speaks louder than them all, to see whether abuses have been 
committed, and whether their properties and their liberties 
have been attended to as they ought to be. 

. This is a kind of subject by which I feel myself overawed 
when I approach it ; there are certain fundamental principles 
which nothing but necessity should expose to pubhc examina- 
tion ; they are pillars, the depth of whose foundation you can- 
not explore, without endangering their strength ; but let it be 
recollected, that the discussion of such subjects should not be 
condemned in me, nor visited upon my client ; the blame, if 
any there be, should rest only with those who have forced them 
into discussion. I say, therefore, it is the right of the people 
to keep an eternal watch upon the conduct of their rulers ; 
and in order to that, the freedom of the press has been cher- 
ished by the law of England. In private defamation, let it 
never be tolerated ; in wicked and wanton aspersion u^^on a 
good and honest administration, let it never be supported. 
Not that a good government can be exposed to danger by 
groundless accusation, but because a bad government is sure 
to find, in the detected falsehood of a licentious press, a se- 
curity and a credit, which it could never otherwise obtain. 

I said a good government cannot be endangered ; I say so 
again ; for whether it be good or bad, it can never depend 
upcm assertion ; the question is decided by simple inspection ; 
to try the tree, look at its fruit ; to judge of the government, 
look at the people. What is the fruit of a good government ? 
the virtue and happiness of the people. Do four millions of 



TRIAL OF AECHIBALD HAMILTON EOWAN. 439 

people in tliis country gather those fruits from that govern- 
ment, to whose injured purity, to whose spotless virtue and 
violated honor this seditious and atrocious libeller is to be 
immolated upon the altar of the constitution ? To you, gen- 
tlemen of the jury, who are bound by the most sacred obliga- 
tion to your country and your God, to speak nothing but 
the truth, I put the question — do the people of this country 
gather those fruits ? — are they orderly, industrious, rehgious, 
and contented ? — do you find them free from bigotry and ig- 
norance, those inseparable concomitants of systematic oppres- 
sion ? Or, to try them by a test as unerring as any of the 
former, are they united? The period has now elapsed in 
which considerations of this extent would have been deemed 
improper to a jury ; happily for these countries, the legislature 
of each has lately changed, or, perhaps, to speak more prop- 
erly, revived and restored the law respecting trials of this 
kind. For the space of thirty or forty years, a usage had 
prevailed in Westminster Hall, by which the judges assumed 
to themselves the decision of the question, whether libel or 
not ; but the learned counsel for the prosecution is now obliged 
to admit that this is a question for the jury only to decide. 
You will naturally listen with respect to the opinion of the 
court, but you will receive it as a matter of advice, not as a 
matter of law ; and you will give it credit, not from any ad- 
ventitious circumstances of authority, but merely so far as it 
meets the concurrence of your own understandings. 

Give me leave now to state the charge, as it stands upon the 
record; it is, "that Mr. Rowan, being a person of a wicked 
and turbulent disposition, and mahciously designing and in- 
tending to excite and diffuse among the subjects of this realm 
of Ireland, discontents, jealousies, and suspicions of our Lord 
the King and his government, and disaffection and disloyalty 
to the person and government of our said Lord the King, and 
to raise very dangerous seditions and tumults within this king- 
dom of Ireland, and to draw the government of this kingdom 
into great scandal, infamy, and disgrace, and to incite the 
subjects of our said Lord the King, to attempt, by force and 
violence, and with arms, to make alterations in the government, 
state, and constitution of this kingdom, and to incite his 



44:0 SELECT SPEECHES OF JOHN PHILPOT CUEKAN. 

Majesty's said subjects to tumult and anarchy, and to overturn 
tlie established constitution of this kingdom, and to overawe 
and intimidate the legislature of this kingdom by an armed 
force;" did " mahciously and seditiously " publish the paper 
in question. ■ 

Gentlemen, without any observation of mine, you must see, 
that this information contains a direct charge upon Mr. 
Eowan ; namely, that he did, with the intents set forth in the 
information, publish the paper ; so that here you have, in 
fact, two or three questions for your decision. First, the mat- 
ter of fact of the publication ; namely, did Mr. Rowan publish 
the paper ? If Mr. Rowan did not in fact publish that paper, 
you have no longer any question on which to employ your 
minds ; if you think that lie was in fact the pubhsher, then, 
and not till then, arises the great and important subject to 
which your judgments must be directed. And that comes 
shortly and simply to this. Is the paper a libel ? and did he 
pubhsh it with the intent charged in the information ? For 
whatever you may think of the abstract question, whether the 
paper be hbeUous or not, and of which paper it has not even 
been insinuated that he is the author, there can be no ground 
for a verdict against him, unless you also are persuaded that 
what he did was done with a criminal design 

I wish, gentlemen, to simplify, and not to perplex ; I there- 
fore say again, if these three circumstances conspire, that he 
pubhshed it, that it was a libel, and that it was pubHshed with 
the purposes alleged in the information, you ought unques- 
tionably to find him guilty ; if, on the other hand, you do not 
find that all these circumstances concurred ; if you cannot upon 
your oaths say that he published it ; if it be not in your 
oj)inion a libel ; and if he did not publish it with the intention 
alleged; I say upon the failure of any one of these points, 
my chent is entitled, in justice, and upon your oaths, to a 
verdict of acquittal. 

Gentlemen, Mr. Attorney- General has thought proper to 
direct your attention to the state and circumstances of public 
affairs at the time of this transaction ; let me also make a few 
retrospective observations on a period at which he has but 
shghtly glanced ; I speak of the events which took place before 



TKIAL OF AKCHIBALD HAMILTON EOWAN. 441 

tlie close of the American war. You know, gentlemen, that 
France had espoused the cause of America, and we became 
thereby engaged in a war with that nation. 

" Heu nescia mens hominum futuri ! " 

Little did that ill-fated monarch know that he was forming 
the first causes of those disastrous events, that were to end m 
the subversion of his throne, in the slaughter of his family, and 
the delugmg of his country with the blood of his people. 
You cannot but remember that, at a time when we had 
scarcely a regular soldier for our defence, when the old and 
young were alarmed and terrified with apprehensions of des- 
cent upon our coasts, that Providence seemed to have worked 
a sort of miracle in our favor. You saw a band of armed men 
come forth at the great call of nature, of honor, and their 
country. You saw men of the greatest wealth and rank ; you 
saw every class of the community give up its members, and 
send them armed into the field, to protect the pubhc and 
private tranquillity of Ireland. It is impossible for any man 
to turn back to that period, without reviving those sentiments 
of tenderness and gTatitude, which then beat in the public 
bosom, to recollect amidst what applause, what tears, what 
prayers, what benedictions, they walked forth amongst specta- 
tors, agitated by the muigied sensations of terror and of re- 
liance, of danger and of protection, imploring the blessings of 
heaven upon their heads, and its conquest upon their swords. 
That illustrious, and adored, and abused body of men, stood 
forward and assumed the title, which I trust the ingratitude 
of their country will never blot from its history, — " The 

YOLUNTEEES OF IeELAND." 

Give me leave now, with great respect, to put this question 
to you : — Do you think the assembUng of that glorious band 
of patriots was an insurrection ? Do you think the invitation 
to that assembhng would have been sedition? They came 
under no commission but the call of their country ; unauthor- 
ized and unsanctioned, except by public emergency and pubhc 
danger. I ask, was that meeting insurrection or not ? I put 
another question : If any man then had published a call on 
that body, and stated that war was declared against the state ; 



442 SELECT SPEECHES OF JOHN PHn^POT CUERAN. 

that the regular troops were withdrawn ; that our coasts were 
hovered round by the ships of the enemy ; that the moment 
was approaching, when the unprotected feebleness of age and 
sex, when the sanctity of habitation, would be disregarded and 
profaned by the brutal ferocity of a rude invader ; if any man 
had then said to them — " Leave your industry for a while, that 
you may return to it again, and come forth in arms for the 
public defence ; " I put the question boldly to you, (it is not 
the case of the Volunteers of that day ; it is the case of my 
client at this hour, which I put to you,) would that call have 
been pronounced in a court of justice, or by a jury on their 
oaths, a criminal and seditious invitation to insurrection ? If 
it would not have been so then, upon what principle can it be 
so now ? What is the force and perfection of the law ? It is, 
the permanency of the law ; it is, that whenever the fact is the 
same, the law is also the same ; it is, that the letter remains 
written, monumented and recorded, to pronounce the same 
decision, upon the same facts, whenever they shall arise. I 
will not affect to conceal it ; you know there has been artful, 
ungrateful, and blasphemous clamor raised against these illus- 
trious characters, the saviours of the King of Ireland. Hav- 
ing mentioned this, let me read a few words of the paper 
alleged to be criminal : " You first took up arms to protect 
your country from foreign enemies, and from domestic dis- 
turbance. For the same purposes it now becomes necessary 
that you should resume them." 

I should be the last man in the world to impute any want 
of candor to the right honorable gentleman, who has stated 
the case on behalf of the- prosecution ; but he has certainly 
fallen into a mistake, which, if not explained, might be highly 
injurious to my client. He supposed that this publication was 
not addressed to those ancient Volunteers, but to new com- 
binations of them, formed upon new principles, and actuated 
by different motives. You have the words to which this con- 
struction is imputed upon the record ; the meaning of his 
mind can be collected only from those v\^ords which he has 
made use of to convey it. The guilt imputable to him can 
only be inferred from the meaning ascribable to those words. 
Let his meaning then be fairly collected by resorting to them. 



TKIAL OF ARCHIBALD HAMILTON EOWAN. 443 

Is there a foundation to suppose that this address was directed 
to any such body of men as has been called a banditti, (with 
what justice it is unnecessary to inquire,) and not to the old 
Volunteers ? 

As to the sneer at the words citizen soldiers, I should feel 
that I was treating a very respected friend with an insidious 
and unmerited kindness, if I affected to expose it by any 
gravity of refutation. I may, however, be permitted to ob- 
serve, that those who are supposed to have disgraced this ex- 
pression by adopting it, have taken it from the idea of the 
British constitution, "that no man in becoming a soldier 
ceases to be a citizen." Would to God, all enemies as they 
are, that that unfortunate people had borrowed more from that 
sacred source of liberty and virtue ; and would to God, for the 
sake of humanity, that they had preserved even the little they 
did borrow! If ever there could be^n objection to that 
appellation, it must have been strongest when it was first 
assumed. To that period the writer manifestly alludes ; he 
addresses " those who first took up arms." " You first took 
up arms to protect your country from foreign enemies and 
from domestic disturbance. For the same purposes, it now 
becomes necessary that you should resume them," Is this ap- 
plicable to those who had never taken up arms before ? "A 
proclamation," says this paper, " has been issued in England 
for embodying the militia, and a proclamation has been issued 
by the Lord Lieutenant and Council of Irela,nd, for repress- 
ing all seditious associations. In consequence of both these 
proclamations, it is reasonable to apprehend danger from 
abroad, and danger at home." God help us from the situa- 
tion of Europe at that time ; we were threatened with too 
probable danger from abroad, and I am afraid it was not 
without foundation we were told of our having something to 
dread at home. 

I find much abuse has been lavished on the disrespect with 
which the proclamation is treated, in that part of the paper 
alleged to be a libel. To that my answer for my cHent is 
short ; I do conceive it competent to a British subject, if he 
thinks that a proclamation has issued for the purpose of rais- 
ing false terrors ; I hold it to be not only the privilege, but the 



444 SELECT SPEECHES OF JOHN PHILPOT CUEEAN. 

duty of a citizen, to set liis countrymen right, with respect 
to such misrepresented danger ; and until a proclamation in 
this country shall have the force of law, the reason and 
grounds of it are sui'ely at least questionable by the people. 
Nay, I will go farther ; if an actual law had passed, receiving 
the sanction of the three estates, if it be exceptionable in any 
matter, it is warrantable to any man in the community to state, 
in a becoming manner, his ideas upon it. And I should be 
at a loss to linow, if the positive laws of Great Britain are 
thus questionable, upon what grounds the proclamation of an 
Irish government should not be open to the animadversion of 
Irish subjects. 

" Whatever be the motive, or from whatever quarter it 
arises," says this paper, " alarm has arisen." Gentlemen, do 
you not know that to be fact ? It has been stated by the At- 
torney-General, and most trul}^, that the most gloomy appre- 
hensions were entert*ned by the whole country. " You, Yol- 
unteers of Ireland, are therefore summoned to arms, at the 
instance of government, as well as. by the responsibijity at- 
tached to your character, and the permanent obligations of 
your institution." I am free to confess, if any man, assuming 
the hberties of a British subject to question public topics, 
should, under the mask of that privilege, publish a proclama- 
tion, inviting the profligate and seditious, those in want, and 
those in despair, to rise up in arms to overawe the legislature 
— to rob us of whatever portion of the blessing of a free gov- 
ernment we possess ; I know of no offence involving greater 
enormity. But that, gentlemen, is the question you are to try. 
If my client acted with an honest mind and fair intention, and 
having, as he believed, the authority of government to support 
him in the idea that danger was to be apprehended, did apply 
to that body of so known and so revered a character, calling 
upon them by their former honor, the principles of their glo- 
rious institution, and the great stake they possessed in their 
country : if he interposed, not upon a fictitious pretext, but a 
real belief of actual and imminent danger, and that their arm- 
ing at that critical moment was necessary to the safety of their 
coimtry, his intention was not only innocent, but highly merito- 
rious. It is a question, gentlemen, upon which you only can 



TRIAL OP AEGHIBALD HAMILTON EOWAN. 445 

decide ; it is for you to say, whether it was criminal in the 
defendant to be misled, and whether he is to fall a sacrifice to 
the prosecution of that government by which he was so de- 
ceived. I say again, gentlemen, you can look only to his own 
words as the interpreters of his meaning ; and to the state and 
circumstances of his country, as he was made to beheve them, 
as the clue to his intention. The case, then, gentlemen, is 
shortly and simply this ; a man of the first family, and fortune, 
and character, and property among you reads a proclamation, 
stating the country tO be in danger fi-om abroad, and at home ; 
and, thus alarmed, thus, upon the authority of the prosecutor, 
alarmed, applies to that august body, before whose awful 
presence sedition must vanish, and insurrection disappear. 
You must surrender, I hesitate not to say, your oaths to un- 
founded assertion, if you can submit to say, that such an act, 
of such a man, so warranted, is a wicked and seditious libel. 
If he was a dupe, let me ask you, who w%s the impostor ? I 
blush and shrink with shame and detestation from tliat mean- 
ness of, dupery and servile complaisance, which could make 
that dupe a victim to the accusation of an impostor. 

You perceive, gentlemen, that I am going into the merits of 
this publication before I apply myself to the question which is 
first in order of time, namely, whether the publication, in point 
of fact, is to be ascribed to Mr. Rowan or not. I have been 
unintentionally led into this violation of order. I should effect 
no purpose of either brevity or clearness, by returning to the 
more methodical course of observation. I have been naturally 
drawn from it by the superior importance of the topic I am 
upon, namely, the merit of the publication in question. 

This pubhcation, if ascribed at all to Mr. Rowan, contains 
four distinct subjects : the first, the invitation to the Yolunteers 
to arm : upon that I have already observed ; but those that 
remain are surely of much importance, and, no doubt, are 
prosecuted, as equally criminal. The paper next states the 
necessity of a reform in parliament : it states, thirdly, the 
necessity of an emancipation of the Catholic inhabitants of 
Ireland ; and, as necessary to the achievement of all these ob- 
jects, does, fourthly, state the necessity of a general delegated 
convention of the people. 



446 SELECT SPEECHES OF JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN. 

It has been alleged, that Mr. Eowan intended, by this publi- 
cation, to excite the subjects of this country to effect an alter- 
ation in the form of your constitution. And here, gentlemen, 
perhaps you may not be unwilling to follow a httle farther 
than Mr. Attorney-General has done, the idea of a late prose- 
cution in Great Britain, upon the subject of a public hbel. It 
is with peculiar fondness I look to that country for solid prin- 
ciples of constitutional liberty and judicial example. You 
have been impressed in no small degree with the manner in 
which this pubhcation marks the different orders of our con- 
stitution, and comments upon them. Let me show you what 
boldness of animadversion of such topics is thought justifiable 
in the British nation, and by a British jury. I have in my 
hand the report of the trial of the printers of the Morning 
Chronicle, for a supposed libel against the state, and of their 
acquittal ; let me read to you some passages from that pubh- 
cation, which a jury of Englishmen were in vain called upon to 
brand with the name of libel : 

"Claiming it as our indefeasible right to associate together in a peace- 
able and friendly manner, for the communication of thoughts, the form- 
ation of opinions, and to promote the general happiness, we think it un- 
necessary to offer any apology for inviting you to join us in this manly 
and benevolent pursuit ; the necessity of the inhabitants of every com- 
munity endeavoring to procure a true knowledge of their rights, their 
duties, and their interests, will not be denied, except by those who are 
the slaves of prejudice, or interested in the continuation of abuses. As 
men who wish to aspire to the title of freemen, we totally deny the wis- 
dom and the humanity of the advice, to approach the defects of govern- 
ment with 'pious awe and trembling solicitude.' What better doctrine 
could the pope or the tyrants ojE Europe desire ? We think, therefore, 
that the cause of truth and justice can never be hurt by temperate and 
honest discussions ; and that cause which will not bear such a scrutiny, 
must be systematically or practically bad. We are sensible that those 
who are not friends to the general good, have attempted to inflame the 
jDublic mind with the cry of ' Danger, ' whenever men have associated for 
discussing the principles of government ; and we have little doubt but 
such conduct will be pursued in this place ; we would therefore caution 
every honest man, who has really the welfare of the nation at heart, to 
avoid being led away by the prostituted clamors of those who live on 
the sources of corruption. We pity the fears of the timorous, and we 
are totally unconcerned respecting the false alarms of the venal. 



TEIAL OF AECHIBALD HAJIILTON EOWAN. 447 

* We view with concern the frequency of wars. We are persuaded 
that the interests of the poor can never be promoted by accession of 
territoiy, when bought at the expense of their labor and blood ; and 
we must say, in the language of a celebrated author, ' We, who are only 
the people, but who pay for wars -with our substance and our blood, wiU 
not cease to tell kings, ' or governments, 'that to them alone wars ai-e 
lorofilable ; that the true and just conquests are those which each makes 
at home, by comforting the peasantry, by promoting agriculture and 
manufactures, by multiplying men and the other productions of nature ; 
that then it is that kings may caU themselves the image of God, whose 
will is perpetually directed to the creation of new beings. If they con- 
tinue to make us fight, and kill one another in uniform, we will continue 
to write and speak, until nations shall be cured of this folly.' 

"We are certain our present heavy burdens are owing, in a great 
measure, to cruel and impolitic wars, and therefore we will do all on 
our part, as peaceable citizens, who have the good of the community at 
heart, to enlighten each other, and protest against them. 

" The present state of the representation of the peoj)le calls for the 
Ijarticular attention of every man Avho has humanity sufficient to feel 
for the honor and happiness of his country, to the defects and cor- 
ruptions of which we are inclined to attribute unnecessary wars, etc. 
We think it a deplorable case when the poor must support a corruption 
which is calculated to oppress them ; when the laborer must give his 
money to afiford the means of preventing him having a voice in its dis- 
posal ; when the loAver classes may say — ' We give you our money, for 
which we have toiled and sweated, and which would save our families from 
cold and hunger ; but we think it more hard that there is nobody whom 
we have delegated, to see that it is not improperly and wickedly silent ; 
we have none to watch over our interests ; the rich only are represented. ' 
An equal and uncorrupt representation would, we are persuaded, save 
us from heavy exi^enses, and deUver us from many oppressions ; we will 
therefore do our duty to procure this reform, which appears to us of 
the utmost importance. 

"In short, we see, with the most lively concern, an army of i^lacemen, 
pensioners, etc., fighting in the cause of corruption and prejudice, and 
spreading the contagion far and wide. 

"We see, with equal sensibility, the present outcry against reforms, 
and a proclamation (tending to cramp the liberty of the press, and dis- 
credit the true friends of the people) receiving the support of numbers 
of our countrymen. 

"We see burdens multiphed, the lower classes sinking into poverty, 
disgrace and excesses, and the means of those shocking abuses increas ed 
for the purpose of revenue. 

"We ask ourselves, 'Are we in England?' Have our forefathers 
fought, bled, and conquered for Uberty ? And did they not think that 



4:4.8 SELECT SPEECHES OF JOHN THILPOT CUKKAN. 

the fruits of their patriotism would be more abundant in peace, plenty, 
and happiness ? 

"Is the condition of the poor never to be improved? 

"Great Britain must have arrived at the highest degree of national 
happiness and prosisei'ity, and our situation must be too good to be 
mended, or the i)rescnt outcry against reforms and improvements is 
inhuman and criminal. But we hope our condition will be speedily 
improved, and to obtain so desirable a good, is the object of our present 
association : an union founded on principles of benevolence and hu- 
manity ; disclaiming all connexion with riots and disorder, but firm in 
our purpose, and warm in our affections for liberty. 

"Lastly, we invite the friends of freedom throughout Great Britain 
to form similar societies, and to act with unanimity and firmness, till 
the people be too wise to be imposed upon; and their influence in 
the government be commensurate with their dignity and importance. 
Then shall we be free and hajspy." 

Such, gentlemen, is the language, wliich a subject of Great 
Britain thinks himself warranted to hold, and upon such lan- 
guage has the corroborating sanction of a British jury been 
stamped by a verdict of acquittal. Such was the honest and 
manly freedom of publication ; in a country, too, where the 
complaint of abuses has not half the foundation it has here. 
I said I loved to look to England for principles of judicial ex- 
ample ; I cannot bnt say to you that it depends on your spirit, 
whether I shall look to it hereafter with sympathy or with 
shame. Be pleased, now, gentlemen, to consider whether the 
statement of the imperfection in your representation has been 
made with a desire of inflaming an attack upon the public 
tranquillity, or with an honest purpose of procuring a remedy, 
for an actually existing grievance. 

It is impossible not to revert to the situation of the times : 
and let me remind ^-^ou, that Avhatever observations of this 
kind I am compelled thus to make in a court of justice, the 
uttering of them in this place is not imputable to my client, 
but to the necessity of defence imposed upon him by this ex- 
traordinary prosecution. 

Gentlemen, the representation of our people is the vital 
principle of then- political existence ; without it they are dead, 
or they live only to servitude ; without it there are two estates 
acting upon and against the third, instead of acting in co-op- 
eration with it ; without it, if the people are oppressed by 



TEIAL OF AECHIBALD HAMILTON EOWAN. 440 

their judges, where is the tribunal to which their judges can be 
amenable? without it, if they are trampled upon and plun- 
dered by a minister, where is the tribunal to which the of- 
fender shall be amenable ? without it, where is the ear to hear, 
or the heart to feel, or the hand to redress their sufferings ? 
Shall they be found, let me ask you, in the accursed bands of 
im23S and minions that bask in their disgrace, and fatten upon 
their spoUs, and flourish upon their ruin ? But let me not put 
this to you as a merely speculative question. It is a plain 
question of fact ; rely upon it, physical man is everywhere the 
same ; it is only the various operations of moral causes that 
gives variety to the social or individual character and condi- 
tion. How otherwise happens it that modern slavery looks 
quietly at the despot, on the very spot where Leonidas ex- 
pired ? The answer is, Sparta has not changed her chmate, 
but she has lost that government which her liberty could not 
survive. 

I call you, therefore, to the plain question of fact. This 
paper recommends a reform in j)arliament ; I put that ques- 
tion to your consciences ; do you think it needs that reform ? 
I put it boldly and fairly to you, do you think the people of 
Ireland are represented as they ought to be ? Do you hesitate 
for an answer ? If you do, let me remind you, that until the 
last year, three milhons of your countrymen have, by the ex- 
press letter of the law, been excluded from the reality of ac- 
tual, and even from the phantom of vktual representation. 
Shall we then be told that this is only the affirmation of a 
wicked and seditious incendiary? If you do not feel the 
mockery of such a charge, look at yom- country ; in what state 
do you find it ? Is it in a state of tranquillity and general sat- 
isfaction ? These are traces by which good are ever to be dis- 
tinguished from bad governments, without any very minute 
inquiiy or speculative refinement. Do you feel that a venera- 
tion for the law, a pious and humble attachment to the consti- 
tution, form the poHtical morality of the people ? Do you find 
that comfort and competency among your people, which are 
always to be found vv^here a government is mild and moderate, 
where taxes are imposed by a body who have an interest in 



450 SELECT SPEECHES OF JOHN PHILPOT CUERAN. 

treating the poorer orders witli compassion, and preventing 
tlie weight of taxation from pressing sore upon them ? 

Gentlemen, I mean not to impeach the state of your repre- 
sentation ; I am not saying that it is defective, or that it ought 
to be altered or amended ; nor is this a place for me to say, 
whether I think that three millions of the inhabitants of a 
country whose whole number is but four, ought to be admitted 
to any efficient situation in the state. It may be said, and 
truly, that these are not questions for either of us directly to 
decide ; but you cannot refuse them some passing considera- 
tion at least ; when you remember that on this subject the real 
question for your decision is, whether the allegation of a defect 
in your constitution is so utterly unfounded and false, that you 
can ascribe it only to the malice and perverseness of a wicked 
mind, and not to the mnocent mistake of an ordinary under- 
standing ; whether it may not be mistake ; whether it can be 
only sedition. 

And here, gentlemen, I own I cannot but regret, that one of 
our countrymen should be criminally pursued, for asserting the 
necessity of a reform, at the very moment when that necessity 
seems admitted by the parliament itself ; that this unhappy 
reform shall, at the same moment, be a subject of legislative 
discussion and criminal prosecution. Far am I from imputing 
any sinister design to the virtue or wisdom of our government ; 
but who can avoid feeling the deplorable impression that must 
be made on the public mind, when the demand for that reform 
is answered by a criminal information. 

I am the more forcibly impressed by this consideration, 
when I consider, that when this information was first put on 
the file, the subject was transiently mentioned in the House of 
Commons. Some ckcumstances retarded the progress of the 
inquiry there, and the progress of the information was equally 
retarded here. On the first day of this session, you all know, 
that subject was again brought forward in the House of Com- 
mons, and, as if they had slept together, this prosecution was 
also revived in the court of King's Bench, and that before a 
jury taken from a panel partly composed of those very mem- 
bers of parhament, who, in the House of Commons, must de- 
bate upon this subject as a measure of public advantage, 



TRIAL OF ARCHIBALD HAMILTON ROWAN. 451 

wliicli they are here called upon to consider as a public crime. 
This paper, gentlemen, insists upon the necessity of eman- 
cipating the Catholics of Ireland, and that is charged as part 
of the libel. If they had waited another year, if they had 
kept this prosecution impending for another year, how much 
would remain for a jury to decide upon, I should be at a loss 
to discover. It seems as if the progress of public information 
was eating away the ground of the prosecution. Since the 
commencement of the prosecution, this part of the libel has 
unluckily received the sanction of the legislature. In that in- 
terval our Catholic brethren have obtained that admission, 
which, it seems, it was a libel to propose ; in what way to ac- 
count for this, I am really at a loss. Have any alarms been 
occasioned by the emancipation of our Catholic brethren ? has 
the bigoted malignity of any individuals been crushed ? or has 
the stability of the government, or that of the country, been 
weakened ? or is one million of subjects stronger than four 
millions ? Do you think that the benelit they received should 
be poisoned by the sting of vengeance ? If you think so, you 
must say to them — " You have demanded emancipation, and 
you have got it ; but we abhor your persons, we are outraged 
at your success, and we will stigmatize by a criminal prosecu- 
tion the adviser of that relief which you have obtained from 
the voice of your country." I ask you, do you think, as hon- 
est men, anxious for the public tranquillity, conscious that 
there are wounds not yet completely cicatrized, that you ought 
to speak this language at this time, to men who are too much 
disposed to think that in this very emancipation they have 
been saved from their own parliament by the humanity of their 
sovereign ? Or do you wish to prepare them for the revoca- 
tion of these improvident concessions ? Do you think it wise 
or humane at this moment to insult them, by sticking up in a 
pillory the man who dared to stand forth as their advocate ? 
I put it to your oaths ; do you think that a blessing of that 
kind, that a victory obtained by justice over bigotry and op- 
pression, should have a stigma cast upon it by an ignominious 
sentence upon men bold and honest enough to propose that 
measure ? to propose the redeeming of religion from the 
abuses of the church, the reclaiming of three millions of men 



452 SELECT SPEECHES OF JOHN PHILrOT CURRAN. 

from bondage, and gi^^ng liberty to all who had a right to de- 
mand it ; giving, I say, in the so much censured words of this 
paper, giving " universal emvncipation !" I speak in the 
spuit of the British law, which makes liberty commensurate 
with and inseparable from British soil ; which proclaims even 
to the stranger and sojourner, the moment he sets his foot upon 
British earth, that the ground on which he treads is holy, and 
consecrated by the genius of universal emancipation. No 
matter in what language his doom may have been pro- 
nounced ; no matter what complexion incompatible with free- 
dom, an Indian or an African sun may have burnt upon him ; 
no matter in what disastrous battle his liberty may have been 
cloven down ; no matter with what solemnities he may have 
been devoted upon the altar of slavery ; the first moment he 
touches the sacred soil of Britain, the altar and the god sink 
together in the dust ; his soul walks abroad in her own ma- 
jesty ; his body sweUs beyond the measm'e of his chains, that 
burst from around him ; and he stands redeemed, regenerated, 
and disenthralled, by the irresistible genius of universal eman- 
cipation. 

[A sudden burst of applause from the court and hall, which was 
L-epeated for a considerable length of time, interrupted Mr. Cur- 
ran. Silence being at length restored, he proceeded :] 

Gentlemen, I am not such a fool as to ascribe an effusion 
of this sort to any merit of mine. It is the mighty theme, and 
not the inconsiderable advocate that can excite interest in the 
hearer. "What you hear is but the testimony which nature 
bears to her own character;,, it is the effusion of her gratitude 
to that Power which stamped that character upon her. 

And permit me to say, that if my cHent had occasion to de- 
fend his cause by any mad or drunken appeals to extrava- 
gance or licentiousness, I trust in God I stand in that situa- 
tion that, humble as I am, he would not have resorted to me 
to be his advocate. I was not recommended to his choice by 
any connexion of principle or party, or even private friend- 
ship ; and saying this, I cannot but add, that I consider not to 
be acquainted with such a man as Mr. Eowan, a want of per- 
sonal good fortune. But upon this great subject of reform and 



TEIAL OF AECHIBALD HAMILTON EOWAN. 453 

emancipation, there is a latitude and boldness of remark, jus- 
tifiable in tlie people, and necessary to the defence of Mr. 
Eowan, for which the habit of professional studies, and tech- 
nical adherence to established forms, have rendered me unfit. 
It is, however, my duty, standing here as his advocate, to 
make some few observations to you which I conceive to be 
material. 

Gentlemen, you are sitting in a country which has a right 
to the British constitution, and which is bound by an indisso- 
luble union with the British nation. If you were not even at 
liberty to debate upon that subject ; if you even were not, by 
the most solemn compacts, founded upon the authority of 
your ancestors and of yourselves, bound to an aUiance, and 
had an election now to make ; in the present unhappy state of 
Europe, if you had been heretofore a stranger to Great Britain 
you would now say — We will enter into society and union with 
you : 

"Uua salus ambobus erit, commune periciilum. " 

But to accomphsh that union, let me tell you, you must learn 
to become like the English people. It is vain to say you will 
protect their freedom, if you abandon your own. The pillar 
whose base has no foundation, can give no support to the dome 
under which its head is placed ; and if you profess to give Eng- 
land that assistance which you refuse to yourselves, she will 
laugh at you^^ foUy, and despise your meanness and insincerity. 
Let us follow this a Httle further — I know you will interpret 
what I say with the candor in which it is spoken. England is 
marked by a natural avarice of freedom, which she is studious 
to engross and accumulate, but most unwilling to impart ; 
whether from any necessity of her policy, or from her weak- 
ness, or from her pride, I will not presume to say, but so is the 
fact ; you need not look to the east nor to the west ; you need 
only look to yourselves. 

In order to confirm this observation, I would appeal to what 
fell from the learned counsel for the Crown, — " that notwith- 
standing the alliance subsisting for two centuries past between 
the two countries, the date of liberty in one goes no further 
back than the year 1782." 

If it required additional confirmation, I should state the 



454 SELECT SPEECHES OF JOHN PHILPOT CUREAN. 

case of the invaded American, and the subjugated Indian, to 
prove that the policy of England has ever been, to govern her 
connexions more as colonies than as allies ; and it must be 
owing to the gi'eat spirit indeed of Ireland if she shall continue 
free. Eely upon it, she shall ever have to hold her course 
against an adverse current ; rely upon it, if the popular spring 
does not continue strong and elastic, a short interval of debil- 
itated nerve and broken force will send you down the stream 
again, and reconsign you to the condition of a province. 

If such should become the fate of your constitution, ask 
yourselves what must be the motive of your government ? It 
is easier to govern a province by a faction, than to govern a 
co-ordinate country by co-ordinate means. I do not say it is 
now, but it will always be thought easiest by the managers of 
tlie day, to govern the Irish nation by the agency of such a 
faction, as long as this country shall be found willing to let her 
connexion with Great Britain be j)reserved only by her own 
degradation. In such a precarious and wretched state of 
things, if it shall ever be found to exist, the true friend of Irish 
liberty and British connexion will see, that the only means of 
saving both must be, as Lord Chatham expressed it, " the in- 
fusion of new health and blood into the constitution." He 
will see how deep a stake each country has in the hberty of 
the other ; he will see what a bulwark he adds to the common 
cause, by giving England a co-ordinate and co-interested ally, 
instead of an oppressed, enfeebled, and suspected dependent ; 
he will see how grossly the creduhty of Britain is abused by 
those who make her believe that her interest is promoted by 
our depression ; he will see the desperate precipice to which 
she approaches by such conduct ; and with an animated and 
generous piety, he will labor to avert her clanger. 

But, gentlemen of the jury, what is likely to be his fate ? 
The interest of the sovereign must be forever the interest of 
his people, because his interest lives beyond his life : it must 
live in his fame ; it must live in the tenderness of his soHci- 
tude for an unborn posterity ; it must hve in that heart-attach- 
ing bond, by which milhons of men have united the destinies 
of themselves and their children with his, and call him by 
the endearing appeUation of king and father of his people. 



TEIAL OF AKCHIBALD HAMILTON ROWAN. 455 

But what can be the interest of such a government as I 
have described ? Not the interest of the King — not the inter- 
est of the people ; but the sordid interest of the hour ; the 
interest in deceiving the one, and in oppressing and defaming 
the other; the interest of unpunished raj^ine and unmerited 
favor : that odious and abject interest, that prompts them to 
extinguish pubhc spirit in punishment or in bribe, and to pur- 
sue every man, even to death, who has sense to see, and integ- 
rity and firmness enough to abhor and to oppose them. What, 
therefore, I say, will be the fate of the man who embarks 
in an enterprise of so much difficulty and danger ? I will not 
answer it. Upon that hazard has my client put everything 
that can be dear to man, his fame, his fortune, his person, his 
liberty, and his children ; but with wliat event your verdict 
only can answer, and to that I refer your country. 

There is a fourth point remaining. Says this paper, — " For 
both these purposes, it appears necessary that provincial con- 
ventions should assemble, preparatory to the convention of the 
Protestant people. The delegates of the Catholic body are 
not justified ia communicating with individuals, or even bodies, 
of inferior authority ; and therefore an assembly of a similar 
nature and organization is necessary to establish an intercourse 
of sentiment, an uniformity of conduct, an united cause, and 
an united nation. If a convention on the one part does not 
soon follow, and is not soon connected with that on the other, 
the common cause will split into the partial interests ; the peo- 
ple will relax into inattention and inertness ; the union of 
affection and exertion will dissolve ; and, too probably, some 
local insurrection, instigated by the malignity of our common 
enemy, may commit the character, and risk the tranquillity of 
the island, which can be obviated only by the influence of an 
assembly arising from, and assimilated with the people, and 
whose spirit may be, as it were, knit with the soul of the na- 
tion. Unless the sense of the Protestant people be, on their 
part, as fairly collected and as jvidiciously directed ; unless 
individual exertion consolidates into collective strength ; unless 
the particles unite into one mass, we may, perhaps, serve some 
person or some party for a little, but the public not at all. 
The nation is neither insolent, nor rebellious, nor seditious ; 



456 SELECT SPEECHES OF JOHN PHILPOT CURKAN. 

wliile it knows its riglits, it is unwilliug to manifest its powers ; 
it would rather supplicate administration to anticipate revolu- 
tion by well-timed reform, and to save their country in mercy 
to themselves." 

Gentlemen, it is with something more than common reve- 
rence, it is with a species of terror that I am obliged to tread 
this ground. But what is the idea, put in the strongest point 
of view ? We are willing not to manifest our powers, but to 
supplicate administration to anticipate revolution, that the 
legislature may save the country, in mercy to itself. 

Let me suggest to you, gentlemen, that there are some cir- 
cumstances, which have happened in the history of this coun- 
try, that may better serve as a comment upon this part of the 
case, than any I can make. I am not boimd to defend Mr. 
Eowan, as to the truth or wisdom of the opinions he may have 
formed. But if he did really conceive the situation of the 
country such, as that the not redressing her grievances might 
lead to a convulsion ; and of such an opinion not even Mr 
Eowan is answerable here for the wisdom, much less shall I 
insinuate any idea of my own upon so awful a subject ; but if 
he did so conceive the fact to be, and acted from the fair and 
honest suggestion of a mind anxious for the public good, I 
must confess, gentlemen, I do not know in what part of the 
British constitution to find the principle of his criminality. 

But, be pleased further to consider, that he cannot be un- 
derstood to put the fact on which he argues on the authority 
of his assertion. The condition of Ireland was as open to the 
observation of every other man, as to that of Mr. Rowan. 
What, then, does this part of the pubhcation amount to ? In 
my mind simply to this : 

"The nature of oppression in all countries is such, that, although it 
may be borne to a certain degree, it cannot be borne beyond that degi-ee. 
You find that exemiilified in Great Britain ; you find the people of 
England patient to a certain point, but patient no longer. That 
infatuated monarch, James II., experienced this. The time did come, 
when the measure of popular sufferings and po^aular patience was full — 
when a single drop was sufficient to make the waters of bitterness to 
overflow. I think this measure in Ireland is brimful at present ; I think 
the state of the representation of the people in parliament is a griev- 
ance ; I think the utter exclusion of three millions ot people is a 



TRIAL OF AECHIBALD HAMILTON EOWAN. 457 

grievance of that kind, that the people are not likely long to endure, 
and the continuation of which may plunge the country into that state of 
despair, which wrongs, exasperated by perseverance, never fail to pro- 
duce." 

But to whom is even tliis language addressed ? Not to the 
body of the people on whose temper and moderation, if once 
excited, perhaps not much confidence could be placed ; but to 
that authoritative body, whose influence and power would have 
restrained the excesses of the irritable and tumultuous, and 
for that purpose expressly does this publication address the 
Volunteers. 

" We are told that Ave are in danger. I call upon you, the great 
constitutional saviours of Ireland, to defend the country to which you 
have given political existence, and to use whatever sanction your great 
name, your sacred character, and the weight you have in the community, 
must give you, to repress wicked designs, if any there are. "We feel 
ourselves strong — the people are always strong ; the public chains can 
only be riveted by the j)ublic hands. Look to those devoted regions of 
southern despotism : behold the exjpiring victim on his knees, presenting 
the javelin, reeking with his blood, to the ferocious monster who returns 
it into his heart. Call not that monster the tyrant ; he is no more than 
the executioner of that inhuman tyranny, which the people practice 
upon themselves, and of which he is only reserved to be a later victim 
than the wretch he has sent before. Look to a nearer country, whero 
the sanguinary characters are more legible — whence you almost hear the 
groans of death and torture. Do you ascribe the rapine and murder in 
France to the few names we are execrating here ? or do you not see that 
it is the frenzy of an infuriated multitude, abusing its own strength, and 
practicing those hideous abominations upon itself ? Against the vio- 
lence of this strength, let your virtue and influence be our safeguard. " 

What criminality, gentlemen of the jury, can you find in this? 
What, at any time ? but I ask you, peculiarly at this momentous 
period, what guilt you can find in it ? My chent saw the scene 
of horror and blood which covers almost the face of Europe ; he 
feared that causes, which he thought similar, might produce 
similar effects ; and he seeks to avert those dangers, by calling 
the united virtue and tried moderation of the country into a state 
of strength and vigilance. Yet this is the conduct which the 
prosecution of this day seeks to punish and stigmatize ; and 
this is the language for which this paper is reprobated to-day, 



458 SELECT SPEECHES OF JOHN PHILPOT CUKEAN. 

as tending to turn the hearts of the people against their sover- 
eign, and inviting them to overturn the constitution. 

Let us now, gentlemen, consider the concluding part of this 
publication. It recommends a meeting of the people, to de- 
liberate on constitutional methods of redressing grievances. 
Upon this subject I am inchned to suspect that I have in mj 
youth taken up crude ideas, not founded, perhaps, in law; 
but I did imagine that, when the biU of rights restored the 
right of petitioning for the redress of grievances, it was under- 
stood that the people might boldly state among themselves 
that grievances did exist ; I did imagine it was understood 
that people might lawfully assemble themselves in such man- 
ner as they might deem most orderly and decorous. I 
thought I had collected it from the greatest luminaries of the 
law. The power of petitioning seemed to me to imply the 
right of assembling for the purpose of deliberation. The law 
requiring a petition to be presented by a limited number, 
seemed to me to admit that the petition might be prepared 
by any number whatever, provided, in doing so, they did not 
commit any breach or violation of the public peace. I know 
that there has been a law passed in the Irish parhament of 
last year, which may bring my former opinion into a merited 
want of authority. The law declares that no body of men 
may delegate a power to any smaller number, to act, think, or 
petition for them. If that law had not passed, I should have 
thought that the assembUng by a delegate convention was re- 
commended, in order to avoid the tumult and disorder of a 
promiscuous assembly of the whole mass of the people. I 
should have conceived, bef-ore that act, that any law to abridge 
the orderly appointment of the few, to consult for the interest 
of the many, and thus force the many to consult by themselves, 
or not at all, would, in fact, be a law not to restrain but to 
promote insurrection. But that law has spoken, and my error 
must stand corrected. 

Of this, however, let me remind you ; you are to try this 
part of the publication by what the law was then, noL by what 
it is now. How was it understood until last session of parha- 
ment? You had, both in England and Ireland, for the last ten 
years, these delegated meetings. The Volunteers of Ireland, 



TRIAL OP ARCHIBALD HAMILTON ROWAN. 459 

in 1783, met by delegation ; tliey framed a plan of parliament- 
ary reform ; they presented it to tlie representative wisdom of 
the nation. It was not received ; but no man ever dreamed 
that it was not the undoubted right of the subject to assemble 
in that manner. They assembled by delegation at Dungan- 
non ; and to show the idea then entertained of the legality of 
their public conduct, that same body of Volunteers was 
thanked by both Houses of parliament, and their delegates 
most graciously received at the throne. The other day you 
had delegated representatives of the Catholics of Ireland, pub- 
licly elected by the members of that persuasion, and sitting in 
convention in the heart of your capital, carrying on an actual 
treaty with the existing government, and under the eye of your 
own parhament, which was then assembled ; you have seen 
the delegates from that convention carry the complaints of 
their grievances to the foot of the throne, from whence they 
brought back to that convention the auspicious tidings of that 
redress which they had been refused at home. 

Such, gentlemen, have been the means of popular commu- 
nication and discussion, which, until the last session, have 
been deemed legal in this country, as, happily for the sister 
kingdom, they are yet considered there. 

I do not complain of this act as any infraction of popular 
hberty ; I should not think it becoming in me to express any 
complaint against a law, when once become such. I observe 
only, that one mode of popular deliberation is thereby taken 
utterly away, and you are reduced to a situation in which you 
never stood before. You are living in a country where the 
constitution is rightly stated to be only ten years old — where 
the people have not the ordinary rudiments of education. It 
is a melancholy story, that the lower orders of the people here 
have less means of being enlightened than the same class of 
people in any other country. If there be no means left by 
which public measures can be canvassed, what will be the 
consequence ? Where the press is free, and discussion unre- 
strained, the mind, by the collision of intercourse, gets rid of 
its own asperities ; a sort of insensible perspiration takes place 
in the body politic, by which those acrimonies, which would 
otherwise fester and inflame, are quietly dissolved and dissi- 



460 SELECT SPEECHES OF JOHN PHILPOT CUERAN. 

patecL But now, if any aggregate assembly sliall meet, they 
a»e censured ; if a printer publishes their resolutions, he is 
punished ; rightl}^, to be sure, in both cases, for it has been 
lately done. If the people say, let us not create tumult, but 
meet in delegation, they cannot do it ; if they are anxious to 
promote parliamentary reform in that way, they cannot do it ; 
the law of the last session has for the first time declared such 
meetings to be a crime. 

What then remains ? The liberty of the press only — that 
sacred palladium, which no influence, no power, no minister, 
no government — which nothing but the depravity, or folly, or 
corruption of a jury, can ever destroy. And what calamities 
are the people saved from, by having public communication 
left open to them ? I will tell you, gentlemen, w^hat they are 
saved from, and what the government is saved from ; I will 
tell 3^ou also to what both are exposed by shutting up that 
communication. In one case, sedition speaks aloud and walks 
abroad ; the demagogue goes forth^the pubhc eye is upon 
him — he frets his busy hour upon the stage ; but soon either 
weariness, or bribe, or punishment, or disappointment, bears 
him down, or drives him off, and he appears no more. In the 
other case, how does the work of sedition go forward ? Night 
after night the muffled rebel steals forth in the dark, and casts 
another and another brand upon the pile, to which, when the 
hour of fatal -maturity shall arrive, he will apply the torch. If 
you doubt of the horrid consequence of suppressing the effu- 
sion even of indi"sddual discontent, look to those enslaved 
countries where the protection of despotism is supposed to be 
secured by such restraints. Even the person of the despot 
there is never in safety. Neither the fears of the despot, nor 
the machinations of the slave, have any slumber — the one an- 
ticipating the moment of peril, the other watching the opportu- 
nity of aggression. The fatal crisis is equaUy a surprise upon 
both ; the decisive instant is precipitated without warning — 
by foUy on the one side, or by frenzy on the other ; and there 
is no notice of the treason, till the traitor acts. In those un- 
fortunate countries — one cannot read it without horror — there 
are officers, whose province it is to have the water which is to 
be drunk by their rulers sealed up in bottles, lest some 



TRIAL OF ARCHIBALD HAJVIILTON ROWAN. 461 

wretched miscreant sliould throw poison into the draught. 
But, gentlemen, if you wish for a nearer and more interest- 
ing examj)le, you have it in the history of your ownrevohitiou. 
You have it at that memorable period, when the monarch 
found a servile acquiescence in the ministers of his folly — when 
the Hberty of the press was trodden under foot — when venal 
sheriffs returned packed juries, to carry into effect those fatal 
conspiracies of the few against the many — when the devoted 
benches of public justice were filled by some of those found- 
lings of fortune, who, overwhelmed in the torrent of corruption 
at an early period, lay at the bottom, like drowned bodies, 
while soundness or sanity remained in them ; but at length, 
becoming buoyant by putrefaction, they rose as they rotted, 
and floated to the surface of the polluted stream, where they 
were drifted along, the objects of terror, and contagion, and 
abomination. 

In that awful moment of a nation's travail, of the last gasp 
of tyranny, and the first breath of freedom, how pregnant is 
the example ! The press extinguished, the people enslaved, 
and the prince undone. As the advocate of society, therefore 
— of peace — of domestic liberty — and the lasting union of the 
two countries — ^I conjure you to guard the liberty of the press, 
that great sentinel of the sfcate, that grand detector of public 
imposture ; guard it, because, when it sinks, there sinks with 
it, in one common grave, the liberty of the subject, and the 
security of the Crown. 

Gentlemen, I am glad that this question has not been 
brought forward earlier ; I rejoice, for the sake of the court, of 
the jury, and of the public repose, that this question has not 
been brought forward till now. In Great Britain, analogous 
circumstances have taken place. At the commencement of 
that unfortunate war which has deluged Europe with blood, 
the spirit of the English people was tremblingly alive to the 
terror of French principles ; at that moment of general par- 
oxysm, to accuse was to convict. The danger looked larger to 
the public eye, from the misty region through which it was 
surveyed. We measure inaccessible heights by the shadows 
which they project, where the lowness and the distance of the 
light form the length of the shade. 



462 SELECT SrEECHES OF JOBN PHILPOT CUERAN. 

There is a sort of aspiring and adventurous credulity, which 
disdains assenting to obvious truths, and delights in catching 
at the improbability of circumstances, as its best grounds of 
faith. To what other cause, gentlemen, can you ascribe, that 
in the wise, the reflecting, and the philosophic nation of Great 
Britain, a printer has been gravely found guilty of a libel, for 
publishing those resolutions to which the present minister of 
that kingdom had actually subscribed his name ? — To what 
other cause can you ascribe, what in my mind is still more as- 
tonishing, in such a country as Scotland — a nation cast in the 
happy medium between the spiritless acquiescence of a sub- 
missi^^e poverty, and the sturdy creduhty of pampered wealth 
— cool and ardent — adventurous and persevering — winging 
her eagle flight against the blaze of every science, with an eye 
that never winks, and a wing that never tires — crowned, as she 
is, with the spoils of every art, and decked with the wealth of 
every muse, from the deep and scrutinizing researches of her 
Hume, to the sweet and simple, but not less sublime and 
pathetic, morality of her Burns — how, from the bosom of a 
country like that, genius, and character, and talents, should be 
banished to a distant barbarous soil, condemned to pine under 
the horrid communion of vulgar vice and base-born profligacy, 
for twice the period that ordinary calculation gives to the con- 
tinuance of human life. 

But I will not further press an idea that is so painful to me, 
and I am sure must be painful to you. I wiU only say, you 
have now an example, of which neither England nor Scotland 
had the advantage ; you have the example of the panic, the 
infatuation, and the contrition of both. It is now for you to 
decide, whether you will profit by their experience of idle 
panic and idle regret ; or whether you meanly prefer to palli- 
ate a servile imitation of their frailty, by a paltry affectation 
of their repentance. It is now for you to show, that you are 
not carried away by the same hectic delusions, to acts, of 
which no tears can wash away the fatal consequences, or the 
indelible reproach. 

Gentlemen, I have been warning you by instances of public 
intellect suspended or obscured ; let me rather excite you by 
the example of that intellect recovered and restored. In that 



TEIAIi OF AECHIBAU) HAMILTON ROWAN. 463 

case wliicli Mr. Attorney-General has cited himself— I mean 
that of the trial of Lambert, in England — is there a topic of 
invective against constituted authorities, is there a topic of 
abuse against every department of British government, that 
you do not find in the most glowing and unqualified terms in 
that publication, for which the printer of it was prosecuted, 
and acquitted by an Enghsh jury ? See, too, what a difference 
there is between the case of a man pubhshing his own opin- 
ion of facts, thinking that he is bound by duty to hazard the 
promulgation of them, and without the remotest hope of any 
personal advantage, and that of a man who makes publication 
his trade. And saying this, let me not be misunderstood. It 
is not my province to enter into any abstract defence of the 
opinions of any man upon public subjects. I do not affirma- 
tively state to you that these grievances, which this paper sup- 
]30ses, do, in fact, exist ; yet I cannot but say, that the movers 
of this prosecution have forced this question upon you. Their 
motives and their merits, Hke those of all accusers, are put in 
issue before you ; and I need not tell you how strongly the 
motive and merits of any informer ought to influence the fate 
of his accusation. 

I agree most imphcitly with Mr. Atfcorney-General, that 
nothing can be more criminal than an attempt to w^ork a 
change in the government by armed force ; and I entreat the 
court will not suffer any expression of mine to be considered 
as giving encouragement or defence to any design to excite 
disaffection, to overawe or to overturn the government. But 
I put my cUent's case upon another ground ; if he was led 
into an opinion of grievances, where there were none, if he 
thought there ought to be a reform, where none was neces- 
sary, he is answerable only for his mtention. He can be an- 
swerable to you in the same way only that he is answerable to 
that God, before whom the accuser, the accused, and the 
judge, must appear together ; that is, not for the clearness of 
his understanding, but for the purity of his heart. 

Gentlemen, Mr. Attorney-General has said, that Mr. Eowan 
did by this pubHcation (supposing it to be his) recommend, 
imder the name of equality, a general indiscriminate assump- 
tion of pubUc rule, by every the meanest person in the state. 



464 SELECT SPEECHES OF JOHN THILPOT CURRAN. 

LoAV as we are in point of public information, there is not, I 
believe, any man, who thinks for a moment, that does not 
know that all which the great body of the people of any coun- 
try can have from any government, is a fair encouragement to 
their industry, and protection for the fruits of their labor. 
And there is scarcely any man, I believe, who does not know, 
that if a people could become so silly as to abandon their sta- 
tions in society, under pretence of governing themselves, they 
would become the dupes and the victims of then' own folly. 
But does this pubhcation recommend any such infatuated 
abandonment, or any such desperate assumption ? I will read 
the words which relate to that subject : " By liberty, we never 
understood unhmited freedom ; nor by equality, the levelling 
of property, or the destruction of subordination," I ask you, 
with what justice, upon what principle of common sense, you 
can charge a man with the pubhcation of sentiments the very 
reverse of what his words avow, and that, when there is no 
collateral evidence, where there is no foundation whatever, 
save those very words, by which his meaning can be ascer- 
tained ? Or, if you do adopt an arbitrary principle of imput- 
ing to him your meaning, instead of his own, what publication 
can be guiltless or safe ? It is a sort of accusation that I am 
ashamed and sorry to see introduced in a court acting on the 
principles of the British constitution. 

In the bitterness of reproach it was said, " Out of thine own 
mouth win I condemn thee." From the severity of justice I 
demand no more. See if, in the words that have been spoken, 
you can find matter to acquit or condemn : " By hberty, we 
never understood unlimited freedom ; nor by equahty, the lev- 
elling of property, or the destruction of subordination. This 
is a calumny invented by that faction, or that gang, which 
misrepresents the King to the people, and the people to the 
King — traduces one half of the nation, to cajole the other — 
and, by keeping up distrust and division, wishes to continue 
the proud arbitrator of the fortune and fate of Ireland." Here 
you find that meaning, disclaimed as a calumny, which is art- 
fully imputed as a crime. 

I say, therefore, gentlemen of the jury, as to the four parts 
into which the publication must be divided, I answer thus. It 



TEIAL OF ARCHIBALD HAMILTON EOWAN. 465 

calls upon the Volunteers. Consider the time, the danger — 
the authority of the prosecutors themselves for believing that 
danger to exist — the high character, the known moderation, 
the approved loyalty of that venerable institution — the simi- 
larity of the circumstances between the period at which they 
were summoned to take arms, and that in which they have 
been called upon to re-assume them. Upon this simple ground, 
gentlemen, you will decide, whether this part of the publica- 
tion was libellous and criminal or not. 

As to reform, I could wish to have said nothing upon it ; I 
believe I have said enough. If Mr. Eowan, in disclosing that 
opinion, thought the state required it, he acted Hke an honest 
man. For the rectitude of the opinion he was not answerable ; 
he discharged his duty in telling the country he thought so. 

As to the Emancipation of the Cathohcs, I cannot but say 
that Mr. Attorney-General did very wisely in keeping clear of 
that subject. Yet, gentlemen, I need not tell you how impor- 
tant a figure it was intended to make upon the scene ; though, 
from unlucky accidents, it has become necessary to expunge it 
during the rehearsal.* 

Of the concluding part of this publication, the convention 
which it recommends, I have spoken already. I wish not to 
trouble you with saying more upon it. I feel that I have al- 
ready trespassed much upon your patience. In truth, upon a 
subject embracing such a variety of topics, a rigid observance 
either of conciseness or arrangement could, perhaps, scarcely 
be expected. It is, however, with pleasure I feel I am draw- 
ing to a close, and that only one question remains, to which I 
would beg your attention. 

Whatever, gentlemen, may be your opinion of the meaning 
of this publication, there yet remains a great point for you to 
decide upon — namely, whether, in! point of fact, this publica- 
tion be imputable to Mr. Eowan, or not? — whether he did 
l^ubhsh it or not ? — Two witnesses are called upon to that fact 
— one of the name of Lyster, and the other of the name of 
Morton. You must have observed that Morton gave no evi- 
dence upon which that paper could have even been read ; ho 

* Referring to tlie Emancipation Act of 1793. 



466 SELECT SPEECHES OF JOHN PHELPOT CURKAN. 

produced no paper — lie identified no paper — he said that he 
got some paper, but that he had given it away. So that, in 
point of law, there was no evidence given by him, on which it 
could have gone to a jury ; and, therefore, it turns entirely up- 
on the evidence of the other witness. He has stated that he 
went to a pubhc meeting, in a place where there was a gal- 
lery crowded with spectators, and that he there got a printed 
paper, the same which has been read to you. 

I know you are well acquainted with the fact, that the 
credit of every witness must be considered by, and rest with 
the jury. They are the sovereign judges of that ; and I will 
not insult your feeUngs by insisting on the caution with which 
you should watch the testimony of a witness that seeks to 
affect the liberty, or property, or character of your fellow- 
citizens. Under what circumstances does this evidence come 
before you ? The witness says he has got a commission in the 
army, by the interest of a lady, from a person then high in 
administration. He told you that he made a memorandum 
upon the back of that paper, it being his general custom, when 
he got such papers, to make an indorsement upon them — that 
he did this from mere fancy — that he had no intention of giv- 
ing any evidence on the subject — " he took it with no such 
view." There is something whimsical enough in this curious 
story. Put his credit upon the positive evidence adduced to 
his character. Who he is I know not — I know not the man ; 
but his credit is impeached. Mr. Blake was called ; he said 
he knew him. I asked him, " Do you think, sir, that Mr. Ly- 
ster is or is not a man deser%dng credit upon his oath ?" If 
you find a verdict of conviction, it can be only upon the credit 
of Mr. Lyster. What said Mr. Blake? Did he tell you that 
he considered him a man to be beheved upon his oath ? He 
did not attempt to say that he did. The best he could say 
was, that he "would hesitate." Do you believe Blake? Have 
you the same opinion of Lyster's testimony that Mr. Blake 
has ? Do you know Lyster ? If you do know him, and know 
that he is credible, your knowledge should not be shaken by 
the doubts of any man. But if you do not know him, you 
must take his credit for an unimpeached witness, swearing 
that he would hesitate to believe him. In my mind, there is a 



TEIAL OF ARCHIBALD HAMILTON ROWAN. 467 

circumstance of the strongest nature tliat came out from Ly- 
ster on the table. I am aware that a most respectable man, if 
impeached by surprise, may not be prepared to repel a wanton 
calumny by contrary testimony. But was Lyster unapprised 
of this attack upon him ? "What said he ? "I knew that you 
had Blake to examine against me — you have brought him here 
for that purpose," He knew the very witness that was to be 
produced against him — he knew that his credit was impeached 
— and yet he produced no person to support that credit. 
What said Mr. Smith ? " From my knowledge of him, I would 
not believe him upon his oath." 

Mr. Attorney-General. — I beg pardon, but I must set Mr. 
Curran right. Mr. Lyster said he had heard Blake would be 
here, but not in time to prepare himself. • 

Mr. Curran. — But what said Mrs. Hatchell? Was the 
production of that witness a surprise upon Mr. Lyster? Her 
cross-examination shows the fact to be the contrary. The 
learned counsel, you see, was perfectly apprised of a chain of 
private circumstances, to which he pointed his questions. This 
lady's daughter was married to the elder brother of the wit- 
ness Lyster. Did he know these circumstances by inspiration ? 
No ; they could come only from Lyster himself. I insist, there- 
fore, that the gentleman knew his character was to be im- 
peached ; his counsel knew it, and not a single witness has 
been produced to support it. Then consider, gentlemen, upon 
what ground can you find a verdict of conviction against my 
client, when the only witness produced to the fact of publica- 
tion is impeached, without even an attempt to defend his 
character? Many hundreds, he said, were at that meeting. 
Why not produce one of them, to swear to the fact of such a 
meeting ? One he has ventured to name ; but he was certain- 
ly very safe in naming a person, who, he has told you, is not 
in the kingdom, and could not, therefore, be called to confront 
him. 

Gentlemen, let me suggest another observation or two, if 
still you have any doubt as to the guilt or innocence of the de- 
fendant. Give me leave to suggest to you what circumstances 
you ought to consider, in order to found your verdict. You 
should consider the character of the person accused ; and ia 



468 SELECT SPEECHES OF JOHN PHILPOT CUERAN. 

this your task is easy. I will venture to say, tliere is not a 
man in this nation more known than the gentleman who is the 
subject of this prosecution ; not only by the part he has taken 
in pubHc concerns, and which he has taken in common with 
many, but still more so, by that extraordinary sympathy for 
human affliction, which, I am sorry to think, he shares with so 
small a number. There is not a day that you hear the cries of 
your starving manufacturers in your streets, that you do not 
also see the advocate of their sufferings — that you do not . see 
his honest and manly figure, with uncovered head, soUciting 
for their relief — searching the frozen heart of charity for every 
string that can be touched by compassion, and urging the force 
of every argument and every motive, save that which his mod- 
esty suppresses, the. authority of his own generous example. 
Or if you see him not there, you may trace his steps to the 
private abode "of disease,' and famine, and despair — the mes- 
senger of heaven, bringing with him food, and medicine, and 
consolation. Are these the materials of which you suppose 
anarchy and public rapine to be formed ? Is this the man on 
whom to fasten the abominable charge of goading on a frantic 
populace to mutiny and bloodshed ? Is this the man likely to 
apostatize from every principle that can bind him to the state 
— his birth, his property, his education, his character, and his 
children ? Let me tell you, gentlemen of the jury, if you agree 
with his prosecutors, in thinking that there ought to be a sa- 
crifice of such a man on such an occasion — and upon the 
credit of such evidence you are to convict him — never did you, 
never can you give a sentence, consigning any man to public 
punishment, with less danger to his person or to his fame : for 
where could the hireling be found to fling contumely or ingrati- 
tude at his head, whose private distresses he had not endeav- 
ored to alleviate, or whose pubhc condition he had not labored 
to improve ? 

I cannot, however, avoid reverting to a cu'cumstance that 
distinguishes the case of Mr. Rowan from that of the late 
sacrifice in a neighboring kingdom.^ 



* Scotland, from wlience Messrs. Muir, Palmer, and others, were transported 
for sedition. 



TRIAL OF ARCHIBALD HAMILTON ROWAN. 469 

The severer law of that country, it seems^and happy for 
them that it should — enables them to remove from their sight 
the victim of their infatuation. The more merciful spirit of 
our law deprives you of that consolation ; his sufferings must 
remain forever before our eyes, a continual call upon your 
shame and your remorse. But those sufferings will do more : 
they wiU not rest satisfied with your unavailing contrition — 
they will challenge the great and paramount inquest of society 
— the man will be weighed against the charge, the witness, and 
the sentence — and impartial justice will demand, why has an 
Irish jury done this deed ? The moment he ceases to be re- 
garded as a criminal, he becomes of necessity an accuser ; and 
let me ask you, what can your most zealous defenders be 
prepared to answer to such a charge ? When your sentence 
shall have sent him forth to that stage, which guilt alone can 
render infamous, let me teU you he will not be hke a Kttlo 
statue upon a mighty pedestal, diminishing by elevation ; but 
he will stand a striking and imposing object upon a monu- 
ment, which, if it does not (and it cannot) record the atrocity 
of his crime, must record the atrocity of his conviction. 

Upon this subject, therefore, credit me when I say, that I 
am still more anxious for you than I can possibly be for him. 
I cannot but feel the peculiarity of your situation. Not the 
jury of his own choice, which the law of England allows, but 
which ours refuses ; collected in that box by a person certainly 
no friend to Mr. Rowan — certainly not very deeply interested 
in giving him a very impartial jury. Feeling this, as I am per- 
suaded you do, you cannot be surprised, however you may be 
distressed, at the mournful presage with which an anxious public 
is led to fear the worst from your possible determination. But I 
will not, for the justice and honor of our common country, suf- 
fer my mind to be borne away by such melancholy anticipa- 
tion. I will not relinquish the confidence that this day will be 
the period of his sufferings ; and, however mercilessly he has 
been hitherto pursued, that your verdict wiH send him home 
to the arms of his family, and the wishes of his country. But 
if, which heaven forbid ! it hath still been unfortunately deter- 
mined, that because he has not bent to power and authority, 
because he would not bow down before the golden calf, and 



470 SELECT SPEECHES OF JOHN PHILPOT CUEEAN. 

worsliip it, he is to be bound and cast into the furnace ; I do 
trust in God that there is a redeeming spirit in the constitution 
"vrhich will be seen to walk with the sufferer through the flames, 
and to preserve him unhurt by the conflagration. 



February Uh 1794. 

[The Eecorder applied to set aside the verdict given in the case 
of Archibald Hamilton Rowan, Esq. The appUcation was ground- 
ed upon different affidavits sworn in court, charging, 1st, One of 
the juroi-s with a declaration against Mr. Rowan, previous to trial ; 
2ndly, Partiality in one of the high sheriffs ; 3rdly, That John 
Lyster, the principal evidence, was not to be beUeved upon his oath; 
he, as the affidavits stated, having been guilty of perjury. And 
4thly, — upon which the learned gentleman rested his ca«e — the 
misdirection of the court. After much discussion, Mr. Curran fol- 
lowed on the same side, and said :] 

It was an early idea, that a verdict in a criminal case could 
not be set aside inconsulto rege ; but the law had stood other- 
wise, without a doubt to impeach its principle, for the last 
two reigns. Common sense would say, that the discretion of 
the court should go at least as far in criminal as in civil cases, 
and very often to go no further would be to stop far short of 
what was right, as in those great questions where the prose- 
cution may be considered either as an attempt to extinguish 
liberty, or as a necessary measure for the purpose of represent- 
ing the virulence of public hcentiousness and dangerous fac- 
tion ; where there can be no alternative between guilt or mar- 
tyrdom ; where the party prosecuted must either be consid- 
ered as a culprit sinking beneath the punishment of his own 
crimes, or a victim sacriticed to the vices of others. But when 
it clearly appears that the party has fallen a prey to persecut- 
ing combination, there remains but one melancholy question 
— how far did that combination reach ? 

There have been two cases lately decided in this very court ; 
the King and Pentland, where the motion was made and re- 
fused ; and the King and Bowen, where it was granted ; both 
of which show, that captious sophistry and technical pedantrj; 



TRIAL OF AECHIBALD HAMILTON ROWAN. 471 

have here, as well as in England, given way to liberal and ra- 
tional inquiry ; and that the court will not now, in their dis- 
cretion, refuse a motion of this kind, unless they can, at the 
same time, lay their hands upon their hearts, and say, they 
believe in their consciences, that justice has been done ; such 
was the manly language of one of your lordships, (Mr. Justice 
Downes,) and such the opinion of the court on a former oc- 
c asion. 

[He then cited 7 Modern 57, as referred to in Bacon, tit. Trial, to 
show that where there was good ground of challenge to a juror, 
not known at the trial, it was sufficient cause for setting aside the 
verdict.] 

In England they have a particular act of parliament, entit- 
ling the party to strike a special jury to try the fact, and then 
he has time between the striking and the trial to question the 
propriety of that jury ; here my client had no information, till 
the instant of trial, who his jurors were to be. 

There are certain indulgences granted at times, perhaps bj 
the connivance of humanity, which men who are not entitled 
to demand them in an open court, obtain, nevertheless, by 
sidelong means ; and perhaps the little breach which affords 
that light to the mind of the man accused, is a circumstance 
concerning which the court would feel pain, even if called upon 
to say, that it should, in all cases, be prevented ; but to over- 
turn principles and authorities, for the purpose of oppressing 
the subject, is what this court wUl never do. 

The first of the affidavits I shall consider, is that of the tra- 
verser. I do not recollect whether it states the sheriff, in 
avowed terms, to be an emissary or a hireling agent of the 
castle, therefore I do not state it from the affidavit ; but he 
swears that he does believe that he did labor to bring into the 
box a jury full of prejudices, and of the blackest impressions ; 
instead of having, as they ought, fair and impartial minds, and 
souls like white paper. 

This sheriff now stands in court ; he might have denied it, 
if he would ; he had an opportunity of answering it ; but he 
has left it an undenied assertion — he was not certainly obHged 
to answer it : for no man is bound to convict himseh. But 



472 SELECT SPEECHES OF JOHN PHILPOT CUBKAN. 

there is a part of that charge which amounts at least to this : 
" Your heart was poisoned against . me, and you collected 
those to be my judges, who, if they could not b& under the 
dominion of bad dispositions, might be, at least, the dupes of 
good." The most favorable thing that can be said is this, you 
sought to bring against me honest prejudices, but you brought 
against me wicked ones. The very general charge that he 
sought for persons who, he knew, were most likely to bring 
prejudices with them into the jury box, is a part of the affida- 
vit that it Avas incumbent on him to answer if he could. 

I do not contend, that what is charged in the affidavit would 
have been a ground of principal challenge to the array ; but I 
hold it to be the better opinion, that a challenge to the array 
for favor does well He in the mouth of the defendant. The 
ancient notion was, you shall not challenge the array for favor, 
where the King is a party ; the King only can challenge for 
favor ; for the principle was, that every man ought to be favor- 
able to the Crown ; but, thank God, the advancement of legal 
knowledge, and the growing understanding of the age, have 
dissipated such illiberal and mischievous conceptions. 

But I am putting too much stress upon such technical, dis- 
carded, and antiquated scruples. The true question has been 
already stated from the authority of Mr. Justice Downes, and 
that question is — " Has justice been done ?" 

It is a matter upon which scarce any understanding would 
condescend to hesitate, whether a man had been fairly tried, 
whose triers had been collected together by an avowed enemy, 
whose conduct had been such as to leave no doubt that he had 
purposely brought prejudiced men into the box. - 

In every country where freedom obtains, there must subsist 
parties. In this country, and Great Britain, I trust there 
never will be a time when there shall not be men found zeal- 
ous for the actual government of the day. So, on, the other 
hand, I trust there will never be a time, when there mU not be 
found men zealous and enthusiastic in the cause of popular 
freedom, and of the pubhc rights. If, therefore, a person in 
pubhc office suffers liis own prejudices, however honestly anx- 
ious he may be for a prosecution carried on by those to whom 
he is attached, to influence him so far as to choose men, to his 



TRIAL OF ARCHIBALD HAMILTON ROWAN. 473 

knowledge devoted to the principles he espouses, it is an error 
which a High Court of Judicature, seeking to do right Justice, 
will not fail to correct. 

A sheriff, in such a case, might not have perceived the par- 
tiahty of his conduct, because he was surveying through the 
medium of prejudice and habitual corruption ; but it is impos- 
sible to think that this sheriff meant to be impartial ; it is an 
interpretation more favorable than his conduct will allow of ; 
if he deserves any credit at all, it is for not answering the 
charge made against him ; at the same time, that, by not an- 
swering it, he has left unimpeached the credit of the charge 
itself. 

[The sheriff here tendered some form of an affidavit, which the 
court would not allow to be sworn or read, for the same reason, 
that those sworn and tendered by the defendant's counsel, had 
been before f-efused. Mr. Curran, however, consented to its being- 
sworn and read, which the Attorney-General declined, being unac- 
quainted with the contents, and uninstructed as to its tendency ; 
it, therefore, was not sworn.] 

Mr. Curran proceeded — Is this, then, the way to meet a fair 
application to the comi;, to see whether justice has been done 
between the subject and the Crown ? I offer it again : let the 
affidavit be read. And let me remind the court, that the great 
reason for sending a cause back to a jury is, that new light 
must be shed upon it ; and how must your lordships feel, 
when you see that indulgence granted to the conscience of the 
jury denied to the court. 

The Attorney-General. — I am concerned that any lawyer 
should make a proposition in the manner Mr. Curran has 
done ; he proposes to have an affidavit read, provided we con- 
sent that others, which the court has abeady refused, should 
be now read. I did not hear it offered ; but is it to be pre- 
sumed that I will consent to have an affidavit read, about 
which I know nothing ? Yesterday, without any communica- 
tion with a human being, I did say, that I conceived it un- 
necessary to answer any of the affidavits, thinking that they 
were not sufficient to ground the application made to the 
court. And it is presumed I am so mad as to consent to the 
reading of affidavits which I have not seen. 



47i SELECT SPEECHES OF JOHN PHILPOT CUEEAN. 

[Mr. Attorney-General, it may be proper to observe, mistook 
Mr. Curran's proposal, which was an unqualified offer to have Mr. ' 
Gifford's affidavit read. Some altercation here took place, when 
Lord Clonmel, Chief Justice, interposed, and said, that the counsel 
had certainly a right to argue it on the ground that the sheriff was 
biased, and did return a jury prejudiced against the traversers. 

Mr. Curran was about to observe upon the expression of one of 
the jury, sworn to in another affidavit, " That there would be no 
safety in the country, until the defendant was either hanged or 
banished," when it was asked by the court, whether the time of 
its coming to the knowledge of the traverser, that the sheriff was 
biased, was stated in his affidavit ?] 

Me. Cueean. — He was in prison, and could not have the at- 
tendance of those counsel whose assistance he had in court ; 
and, besides, from the nature of the circumstances, it was im- 
possible he could have been sufficiently apprised of its con- 
sequences, for he saw not that panel till the day of the trial, 
when he could not have had time to make any inquiry into the 
characters, dispositions, or connexions of the jury. 

If triers had been appointed to determine the issue, favor- 
able or not, what would have been their finding ? Could they 
say upon their oaths, that he was not unfavorable to that 
party against whom he could make such a declaration ? 

Favor is not cause of principal challenge, which, if put upon 
a pleading, would conclude the party. Eavor is that which 
makes the man, in vulgar parlance, unfit to try the question. 
And as to the time these facts came to his knowledge, he has 
sworn that he was utterly ignorant of them at the time of his 
coming into court to tak-e his trial. 

I will not glance at the character of any absent noble per- 
son, high in office ; but let it be remembered, that it is a gov- 
ernment prosecution, and that the witness has, from a low and 
handicap situation, scraped himself into preferment, perhaps 
— for I will put the best construction upon it — by offering 
himself as a man honestly anxious for the welfare of his coun- 
try ; in short, it is too obvious to require any comment, what 
the natm-e of the whole transaction has been, that he got his 
commission as a compensation pro labore impendendo and camo 
afterwards into court, to pay down the stipulated purchase. 



TEIAL OF AECHIBALD HAMILTON EOWAN. 475 

Had this, then, been an unbiased jury, was there not some- 
thing in all these circumstances, that might have afforded 
more deliberation than that of one minute per man, for only 
so long was the jury out ? and, had this been a fair witness, 
would he have lain down under a charge which, if true, ought 
not only to damn this verdict, but his character forever ? 
What would a corps of brother officers think of a person, 
charged upon oath with the commission of two willful perju- 
ries, and that charge remaining undenied? Here is an un- 
denied charge, in point of fact ; and although I do not call 
upon the court to say that this is a guilty and abominable 
person, yet surely the suspicion is strongly so, and must be 
considered. This was at least a verdict where the evidence 
went to the jury, under slighter blemishes than it will if my 
client has the advantage of another trial ; for then he will put 
it out of the power of man to doubt that this witness has been 
perjured — this witness, who has had notice both here and at 
the trial, of the aspersions on his character, and yet has not 
called a human being to say that he entertained a contrary 
opinion of him. 

Was he known anywhere ? Did he crawl unobserved to the 
castle? Was it without the aid or knowledge of anybody 
that that gaudy plumage grew on him, in which he appeared 
in court ? If he was known for anything else than what he is 
stated to be, it was, upon that day, almost a physical impos- 
sibihty, in a court-house, which almost contained the country, 
not to have found some person, to give some sort of testimony 
respecting his general character. For though no man is 
bound to be ready at all times to answer particular charges, 
yet every man is supposed to come with his pubhc attestation 
of common and general probity. But he has left that char- 
acter, upon the merits of which my client is convicted, unsup- 
ported, even by his own poor corporal swearing. You are 
called upon, then, to say, whether, upon the evidence of a 
being of this kind, such a man as that is to be convicted, and 
sentenced to punishment, in a country where humanity is the 
leading feature even of the criminal law. 

I have now to deal with the evidence of the second witness. 
A man coming to support the credit of another collaterally, 



476 SELECT SPEECHES OF JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN. 

is himself particularly pledged ; then, what was liis testimony? 
He did not know whether Mr. Gifford was concerned in the 
newspaper ! And now, you have the silence of Gifford him- 
self, in not answering Mr. Eowan's affidavit, to contradict that. 
And next, he did not know whether his own cousin-german 
was the relation of tlieir common uncle ! I call upon you, my 
lords, in the name of sacred justice and your country, to de- 
clare whether the melancholy scenes and murderous plots of 
the Meal-tub and the Kye-house are to be acted over again ; 
and whether every Titus Gates that can be found is to be 
called into your courts, as the common vouchee of base and 
perjured accusation. 

I also conceive, my lords, that the du'ection of the court 
was not agreeable to the law of Ireland. The defence of my 
chent was rested upon this : that there was no evidence of the 
fact of publication ; upon the incredibility of the fact ; iand 
the circumstances of discredit in the character of the witness ; 
yet the court made this observation : " Gentlemen, it scarcely 
lies in th-e mouth of Mr. Bo wan to buHd a defence upon ob- 
jections of this kind to the characters of witnesses, because 
the fact was pubhc ; there were many there; the room was 
crowded below, the gallery was crowded above ; and the pub- 
licity of the fact enabled him to produce a number of wit- 
nesses to falsify the assertion of the prosecutor, if, in fact, it 
could be falsified ! " Is that the principle of criminal law ? 
Is it a part of the British law, that the fate of the accused 
shall abide, not the positive estabhshment of guilt by the 
prosecutor, but the negative proof of innocence by himself ? 
Why has it been said iia foohsh old books, that the law sup- 
poses the innocence of every man, till the contrary is proved ? 
How has it happened that that language has been admired 
for,its humanity, and not laughed at for its absurdity, in which 
the prayers of the court are addressed to heaven for the safe 
dehverance of the man accused ? How comes it that so much 
public time is wasted in gomg into evidence of guilt, if the 
bare accusation of a man did call upon him to go into evi- 
dence of his innocence ? The force of the observation is this. 
Mr. Bowan impeaches the credit of a witness, who has sworn 
that he saw him present, and doing certaiu acts, at a certain 



TEIAL OF AKCHEBALD HAMILTON ROWAN. 477 

meeting ; but it is asked, lias he substantiated that discredit, 
by caUing all the persons who were present to prove his ab- 
sence from that meeting, which is only stated to have existed 
by a witness whom he alleges to have perjured himself? I 
call upon the example of judicial character ; upon the faith of 
that . high office, which is never so dignified as when it sees its 
errors and corrects them, to say, that the court was for a mo- 
ment led away, so as to argue from the most seductive of all 
sophisms, that of the petitio iDrincijpii. 

See what meaning is to be gathered from such words : we 
say the whole that this man has sworn, is a consummate lie ; 
show it to be so, says the court, by admitting a part of it to be 
true. It is a false swearing ; it is a conspiracy of two wit- 
nesses against this defendant ; well, then, it lies upon him to 
rebut their testimony, by proving a great deal of it to be true ! 
Is conjecture, then, in criminal cases, to stand in the place of 
truth and demonstration ? Why were not some of those, (I 
will strip the case of the honor of names which I respect,) but 
why were not some of those, who knew that these two persons 
were to be brought forward, and that there were to be objec- 
tions to their credit, if, as it is stated, it happened in the pres- 
ence of a public crowd, rushing in from motives of curiosity, 
why were not numbers called on to establish that fact ? On 
the contrary, the court have said to this effect : Mr. Rowan, 
you say you were not there ; produce any of those persons 
with whom you were there, to swear you were not there ! 
You say it was a perjury ; if so, produce the people, that he 
has perjured himself in swearing to have been there ! But as 
to your own being there, you can easily show the contrary of 
that, by producing some man that you saw there ! You say 
you were not there ! Yes. There were one hundred and fifty 
persons there : now produce any one of those to swear they 
saw you there ! 

It is impossible for the human mind to suppose a case, in 
which infatuation must have prevailed in a more progressive 
degree, than when a jury are thus, in fact, directed to receive 
no refutation, nor proof of the perjury of the witness, but only 
of his truth. We will permit you to deny the charge, by es- 
tablishing the fact : we wiU permit you to prove that they 



478 SELECT SPEECHES OF JOHN PHILPOT CURKAN. 

swore falsely to your being there, by producing another wit- 
ness to prove to a certainty that you were there. 

[Mr. Curran was here interrupted by Lord Chief Justice Clon- 
mel.] 

Lord Clonmel. — The reasoning of the court was strong 
upon that point ; this is a transaction stated by the witness to 
haye happened in open day, in a crowded assembly, in the 
capital, amidst a number of persons dressed in the uniform of 
Hamilton Eowan. There has been nothing suddenly brought 
forward to surprise the traverser ; yet what has he done ? Did 
he offer, as in the common course, to prove an alibi ? It is 
stated to be at such a day; the witness swears at such an 
hour; the place is sworn to have been full of people, of Mr. 
Rowan's friends ; but if there was even a partial assembly, it 
would be easy still to produce some one of those persons who 
were present, to say, that the fact did not happen which has 
been sworn to ; or if you say Mr. Rowan was not there, it is 
easier still to prove it, by showing where he was ; as thus : I 
breakfasted with him, I dined with him, I supped with him ; 
he was with me, he was not at Pardon's : disprove that asser- 
tion by proving an affirmation inconsistent with it. 

Mr. Cueran. — I beg leave to remind the court of what fell 
from it. " He may call," said the court, " any of those per- 
sons ; he has not produced one of them ;" upon this, I think, a 
most material point does hang. " He might have called them, 
for they were all of his own party." 

Lord Clonmel. — That is, if there were such persons there, 
or if there was no meeting at all, he might have proved that. 

Mr. Curran. — There was no such idea put to the jury, as 
whether there was a meeting or not : it was said they were all 
of his party, he might have produced them ; and the non-pro- 
duction of them was a " volume of evidence" upon that point. 
No refinement can avoid this conclusion, that, even as your 
lordship now states the charge, the fate of the man must de- 
pend upon proving the negative. 

Until the credit of the witness was estabhshed, he could not 
be called upon to bring any contrary evidence. What does 
the duty of every counsel dictate to him, if the case is not 



TEIAL OP AECHIBALD HAMILTON EOWAN. 479 

made out by his adversary or prosecutor ? Let it rest ; the 
court is bound to tell the jury so, and the jury are bound to 
find him not guilty. It is a most unshaken maxim, that nemo 
teneticr prodere seipsum. And it would indeed be a very in- 
quisitorial exercise of power, to call upon a man to run the 
risk of confirming the charge, under the penalty of being con- 
victed by nil dicit. Surely, at the criminal side of this court, 
as yet, there has been no such judgment pronounced. It is 
only when the party stands mute from malice, that such ex- 
tremes can be resorted to. I never before heard an intimation 
from any judge to a jury, that bad evidence, Hable to any and 
every exception, ought to receive a sanction from the silence 
of the party. The substance of the charge was neither more 
nor less than this : that the falsehood of the evidence shall 
receive support and credit from the silence of the man accused. 
"With anxiety for the honor and rehgion of the law, I demand 
it of you, must not the jury have understood that this silence 
was evidence to go to them ? is the meaning contained in the 
expression, " a volume of evidence," only insinuation ? I do 
not know where any man could be safe ; I do not know what 
any man could do to screen himself from prosecution ; I know 
not how he could be sure, even when he was at his prayers 
before the throne of heaven, that he was not passing that 
moment of his life, on which he was to be charged with the 
commission of some crime, to be expiated to society by the 
forfeiture of his liberty or of his life ; I do not know what 
shall become of the subject, if a jury are to be told that the 
silence of the man charged is a " volume of evidence " that he 
is guilty of the crime ; where is it written ? I know there is a 
place where vulgar frenzy cries out, that the public instrument 
must be drenched in blood ; where defence is gagged, and the 
devoted wretch must perish. But even there, the victim of 
such tyranny is not made to fill, by voluntary silence, the de- 
fects of his accusation ; for his tongue is tied, and therefore 
no advantage is taken of him by construction ; it cannot be 
there said that his not speaking is a volume of evidence to 
prove his guilt. 

But to avoid all misunderstanding, see what is the force of 
my objection ; is it, that the charge of the court cannot receive 



480 SELECT SPEECHES OF JOHN PHILPOT CUEEAN. 

a practicable interpretation, that may not terrify men's minds 
with ideas such as I have presented ? No ; I am saying no 
such thing ; I have lived too long, and observed too much, not 
to know, that every word in a phrase is one of the feet upon 
which it runs, and how the shortening or lengthening of one 
of those feet will alter the progress or direction of its motion. 
I am not arguing that the charge of the court cannot by any 
possibility be reconciled to the principles of law ; I am agi- 
tating a more imj^ortant question ; I am putting it to the con- 
science of the court, whether a jury may not have probably 
collected the same meaning from it which I have affixed to it ; 
and whether there ought not to have been a volume of ex- 
planation, to do away the fatal consequences of such mistake. 

On what sort of a case am I now speaking ? on one of that 
kind with which it is known the public heart has been beating 
for many months ; which, from a single being in society has 
scarcely received a cool or tranquil examination. I am mak- 
ing that sort of application which the expansion of liberal 
reason and the decay of technical bigotry have made a favored 
application. 

In earher times, it might have been thought sacrilege to have 
meddled with a verdict once pronounced ; since then, the true 
principles of justice have been better understood ; so that now, 
the whole wisdom of the whole court will have an opportunity 
of looking over that verdict, and setting right the mistake which 
has occasioned it. 

[Mr. Curran made other observations, as well in corroboration 
of his own remarks, as in answer to the opposite counsel, of which 
it is impossible to give an exact detail, and concluded :] 

You are standing on the scanty isthmus that divides the 
great ocean of duration, on one side of the past, on the other 
of the future ; a ground that, while you yet hear me, is washed 
from beneath our feet. Let me remind you, my lords, while 
your determination is yet in your power, "Bum versatur adhuc 
intra penetralia Vestce," that on that ocean of future you must 
set your judgment afloat. And future ages will assume the 
same authority which you have assumed; posterity feel the 
same emotions which you have felt, when your little hearts 



TRIAL OF ARCHIBALD HAMILTON EOWAN, 481 

have beaten, and your infant eyes have overflowed, at reading 
the sad history of the sufferings of a Eussell or a Sidney. 

[The court sentenced Eowan to a fine of £500, and two years' 
imprisonment, and to find security, but he escaped to France.] 



SPEECH ON CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION. 

October 17th, 1796. 



[On the 17th of October, Grattan moved " that the admissibility 
of persons professing the Koman Cathohc religion to seats in par- 
liament is consistent with the safety of the Crown and the connexion 
of Ireland with Great Britain." George Ponsonby seconded it, and 
it was opposed with fury by the government. The speaker immedi- 
ately preceding Curran was Dr. Duigenan, who attacked the Catho- 
lics coUectively and individually, past, present, and future, in most 
insolent language. Curran said :] 

I declare, sir, that I have no words to express the indigna- 
tion I feel at the despicable attempt to skulk from the discus- 
sion of so important and so necessary a question, by the affec- 
tation of an appeal to our secrecy and our discretion ; the lu- 
dicrous, the ridiculous secrecy of a public assembly ; the non- 
sense of pretending to conceal from the world what they know 
as well, or better, than ourselves; the rare discretion of an 
Irish parliament hiding from the Executive Directory of the 
French Republic the operations of their own armies ; conceal- 
ing from them their victories in Italy, or their humiliation of 
Great Britain ; concealing from them the various coquetry of 
lier negotiations, and her now avowed solicitations for a peace. 
As ridiculous and as empty is the senseless parade of affecting 
to keep our own deliberations a secret. Rely upon it, sir, if 
our enemies condescend to feel any curiosity as to our discus- 
sion, you might as well propose to conceal from them the course 
of the Danube, or the course of the Rhine, as the course of a 
debate in this assembly, as winding, perhaps, and perhaps as 
muddy as either. But the folly of the present advocates for 
silence and for secrecy goes still farther : it proposes to keep all 



482 SELECT SPEECHES OF JOHN PHILPOT CUKRAN. 

these matters a profound secret from ourselves ; it goes to the 
extravagant length of saymg, that if we be beaten, we are not 
to dehberate uj)on the means of repairing our disasters, be- 
cause that would be to own that we were beaten ; that if the 
enemy were at our gates it would not be prudent to acknowl- 
edge so terrifying a fact, even in considering the means of re- 
pelling him ; that if our people are disaffected, we ought to be 
peculiarly cautious of any measures that can possibly tend to 
conciliation and union, because the adoption, or even the dis- 
cussion, of such measures, would be in effect to teU ourselves, 
and to tell all the world, that the people are disaffected. The 
infatuation or the presumption of ministers goes even further 
than this — it insists upon the denial and the avowal of the very 
same facts ; that we are to be alarmed with an invasion, for 
the purpose of making us obsequious to all the plans of min- 
isters for intrenching themselves in their places ; that we are 
to be panic-struck for them, but disdainful for ourselves ; that 
our people are to be disaffected, and the consequences of that 
disaffection to be the most dangerous and the most imminent, 
for the purpose of despoihng ourselves of our best and most sa- 
cred privileges. So imminent is this danger, that it is declared 
by ministers and by their adherents, that in order to preserve 
our liberties forever, it is absolutely necessary to surrender them 
for a time ; the surrender has been actually made. So fright- 
fully disunited and divided are we, that we cannot venture to 
trust ourselves with the possession of our freedom, but we are 
aU united as one man against redressing the grievances of the 
great majority of ourselves ; we are all united as one man 
against the conciliation of our animosities, and the consolida- 
tion of our strength. I, for one, will never submit to be made 
the credulous dupe of an imposture so gross and so impudent. 
I know that the times are critical indeed ; I know that it is 
necessary to open our eyes to our danger, and to meet it in the 
front ; to consider what that danger is, and to consider of the 
best, and, perhaps, the only, possible means of averting it. 
For these reasons I consider the resolution not only a measure 
of justice and of honesty, but of the most pressing necessity. 

[Mr, Curran entered largely into the state of the empire and of 
its allies — of the disposition of our enemies towards Great Britain 



CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION. 483 

— of the nature of their political principles, and of the rapid dis- 
semination of those principles.] 

It is difficult to tell whether the dissemination of these prin- 
ciples is hkely to be more encouraged, by the continuance of 
the war or by the establishment of a peace ; and if the war be, 
as has been repeatedly insisted on, a war on our part for the 
preservation of social order and of limited monarchy, an im- 
mediate necessity exists of making those objects the common 
interest and the common cause of every man in the nation. I 
spurn the idea of any disloyalty in the Catholics, — an idea 
which is sometimes more than intimated, and sometimes as 
vehemently disclaimed, by the enemies of Catholic emancipa- 
tion. But the Catholics are men, and are, of course, sensible 
to the impression of kindness and injury, and of insult ; they 
know their rights, and feel their wrongs, and nothing but the 
grossest ignorance, or the meanest hypocrisy, can represent 
them as cringing with a slavish fondness to those who oppress 
and insult them. I sought to remove their oppressions, in or- 
der to make the interests of the whole nation one and the 
same ; to this great object the resolution moved by my right 
honorable friend, manifestly tends ; and I lament exceedingly 
that so indecent and so disingenuous a way of evading that 
motion has been resorted to, as passing to the order of the 
day — a conduct that, however speciously the gentlemen who 
have adopted it may endeavor to excuse, can be regarded by 
the Catholics, and by the public, no otherwise than as an ex- 
pression of direct hostility to the Catholic claims. It has 
been asserted that the Catholics are already in possession of 
civil liberty, and are only seeking for political power. "What 
is it, then, that we are so anxiously withholding, and so greed- 
ily monopolizing ? The answer which has been given to that 
assertion, by a learned and honorable friend near me, (Mr. W. 
Smith,) is that of a true patriot, and of a sound constitutional 
lawyer ; namely — that civil liberty was a shadow, without a 
sufficient portion of political power to protect it. 

[Having replied to the arguments of several members who had 
preceded him in the debate, Mr. Garran came to the speech that 




484 SELECT SPEECHES OF JOHN PHILPOT CUEKAN. 

had been delivered by Mr. Duigenan, and entertained the House, 
for about half an hour, with the most hvely sallies of wit and 
humor.] 

The learned' doctor has made himself a very prominent fig- 
ure in this debate. Furious, indeed, has been his anger, and 
manifold his attack ; what argument, or what man, or what thing 
has he not abused ? Half choked by his rage in refuting those 
who have spoken, he has relieved himself by attacking those 
who have not sjpoken. He has abused the CathoUcs, he has 
abused their ancestors, he has abused the merchants of Ire- 
land, he has abused Mr. Burke, he has abused those who 
voted for the order of the day . 

I do not know but I ought to be obliged to the learned doc- 
tor, for honoring me with a place in the invective ; he has 
called me the bottle-holder of my right honorable friend. 
Sure I am, that if I had been the bottle-holder of both, the 
learned doctor would have less reason to complain of me than 
my right honorable friend ; for him I should have left per- 
fectly sober, whilst it would very clearly appear, that, with 
respect to the learned doctor, the bottle had not only been 
managed fairly, but generously ; and if, in furnishing him with 
hquor, I had not furnished him with argument, I had, at least, 
furnished him with a good excuse for wanting it ; with the 
best excuse for that confusion of history and divinity, and 
civil law and canon law — ^that rollicking mixture of politics 
and theology, and antiquity, with which he has overwhelmed 
the debate ; for the havoc and carnage he has made of the 
population of the last age, and the fury with which he seemed 
determined to exterminate, and even to devour the population 
of this ; and which urged him, after tearing and gnawing the 
characters of the Catholics, to spend the last efforts of his 
rage with the most unrelenting ferocity, in actually gnawing 
their names. [Alluding to Dr. Duigenan' s pronunciation of 
the name of Mr. Keogh, and which, Mr. Curran said, was a 
kind of pronunciatory defamation.] In truth, sir, I felt some 
surprise, and some regret, when I heard him describe the 
sceptre of lath, and tiara of straw, and mimic his bedlamite 
Emperor and Pope with such refined and happy gesticulation, 



CATHOLIC EMAJi^CIPATION. 485 

that lie could be prevailed on to quit so congenial a company, 
I should not, however, be disposed to hasten his return to 
them, or to precipitate the access of his fit, if, by a most un- 
lucky felicity of indiscretion, he had not dropped some doc- 
trines which the silent approbation of the minister seemed to 
have adopted. I do not mean, amongst these doctrines, to 
place the learned doctor's opinions touching the revolution, 
nor his wise and valorous plan, in case of an invasion, of 
arming the beadles and the sextons, and putting himself in 
wind for an attack upon the French, by a massacre of the 
Papists ; the doctrine I mean is, that Catholic franchise is 
inconsistent with British connexion. Strong, indeed, must the 
minister be in so wild and desperate a prejudice, if he can ven- 
ture, in the fallen state of the empire, under the disasters of the 
war, and with an enemy at the gate — if he can dare to state 
to the great body of the Irish nation, that their slavery is the 
condition of theh connexion with- England ; that she is more 
afraid of yielding to Irish liberty than of losing Irish connex- 
ion. The denunciation is not yet upon record ; it might yet 
be left with the learned doctor, who, I hope, has embraced it 
only to make it odious — has hugged it in his arms with the 
generous purpose of plunging with it into the deep, and ex- 
posing it to merited derision, even at the hazard of the char- 
acter of his own sanity. It is yet in the power of the minis- 
ter to decide whether a blasphemy of this kind shall pass for 
the mere ravings of frenzy, or for the solemn and mischievous 
lunacy of a minister. I call, therefore, again to rouse that 
minister from his trance, and in the hearing of the two coun- 
tries, to put this question to him, which must be heard by a 
'third. Whether at no period, upon no event, at no extremity, 
we are to hope for any connection with Britain, except that of 
the master and the slave, and this, even without the assertion 
of any fact that could support such a proscription ? It is ne- 
cessary, I find, to state the terms and the nature of the con- 
nexion ; it has been grossly misrepresented ; it is a great fede- 
ral contract between perfectly equal nations, pledging them- 
selves to equal fate, upon the terms of equal liberty — upon 
perfectly equal liberty. The motive to that contract is the mu- 
tual benefit to each — the object of it their mutual and common 



486 SELECT SPEECHES OF JOHN PHILPOT CUBRAN. 

benefit ; the condition of the compact is, the honest and fair 
performance of it, and from tbat honest and fair performance, 
and from that only, arises the obhgation of it. If England 
show a decided purpose of invading our liberty, the compact, 
by such an act of foulness and perfidy, is broken, and the con- 
nexion utterly at an end ; but I say, the resolution moved for 
by my right honorable friend, to the test of this connexion, 
to invade our liberty, is a dissolution of it. 

But what is liberty, as known to our constitution ? It is a 
portion of political power necessary to its conservation ; as, 
for instance, the liberty of the Commons of those kingdoms is 
that right, accompanied with a portion of political power to 
preserve it against the Crown and against the aristocracy. It 
is by invading the power that the right is attacked in any of 
its constituent parts ; hence it is, that if the Crown show a de- 
liberate design of so destroying it, it is an abdication ; and let 
it be remembered that by our compact we have given up no 
constitutional right. Therefore I am warranted, as a consti- 
tutional lawyer, in stating, that if the Crown or its ministers, 
by force or by fraud, destroy that fair representation of the 
people, by which alone they can be protected in their liberty, 
it is a direct breach of the contract of connexion; and I do 
not scruple to say, that if a House of Commons could be so 
debased as to deny the right stated in the resolution, it is out 
of their own mouths conclusive evidence of the fact. 

I insist that the claim of the Catholics to that right is directly 
within the spirit of the compact. And what are the al'guments 
advanced agamst the claim? One is an argument which, if 
founded on fact, would have «ome weight ; it is, that the Cath- 
olics did not make the claim at all. Another argument is used, 
which, I think, has as little foundation in fact, and is not very 
easily to be reconciled to the other — it is, that the Catholics 
make their claim with insolence, and attempt to carry their 
object by intimidation. Let gentlemen take this fact, if they 
please, in opposition to their own denial of it. The Catholics 
then do make the demand. Is their demand just ? — is it just 
that they should be free ? — is it just that they should have 
franchise ? The justice is expressly admitted. Why not give 
it, then? The aitswer is, they demand it with insolence. 



CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION. 487 

Suppose that assertion, false as it is in fact, to be true, is it any 
argument witli a public assembly, that any incivility of demand 
can cover the injustice of refusal ? How low must that assem- 
bly be fallen which can suggest as an apology for the refusal of 
an incontestable right, the answer which a bankrupt buck might 
give to the demand of his tailor — ^he will not pay the bill, be- 
cause " the rascal had dared to threaten his honor." 

As another argument against their claims, their principles 
have been mahgned ; the experience of a century is the refu- 
tation of the aspersion. The articles of their faith have been 
opposed, by the learned doctor, to the validity of their claims. 
Can their rehgion be an objection, where a total absence of all 
religion, where atheism itself, is none ? The learned doctor, 
no doubt, thought he was praising the mercy with which they 
have been governed, when he dilated upon their poverty ; but 
can poverty be an objection in an assembly whose humble and 
Christian condescension shut not its doors even against the 
common beggar ? He has traduced some of them by name : 
" Mr. Byrne, Mr. Keogh, and four or five rufl&ans from the 
Liberty ;" but this is something better than frenzy ; this is 
something better than the want of mere feeling and decorum ; 
there cannot, perhaps, be a better way of evincing a further and 
more important want of the Irish nation, the want of a reformed 
representation of the people in parliament. For what can im- 
press the necessity of it more strongly upon the justice, upon 
the humanity, the indignation, and the shame of an assembly 
of Irish gentlemen, than to find the people so stripped of all 
share in the representation, as that the most respectable class 
of our fellow-citizens, men who have acquired wealth upon the 
noblest principle, the practice of commercial industry and in- 
tegrity, could be made the butts of such idle and unavaiHng, 
such unworthy, such shameful abuse, without the possibility of 
having an opportunity to vindicate themselves — when men of 
that class can be exposed to the degradation of unanswered 
calumny, or the more bitter degradation of eleemosynary do- 
fence ? 

[Mr. Curran touched upon a variety of other topics, and con- 
cluded with the most forcible appeal to the Minister, to the House, 



488 SELECT SPEECHES OF JOHN PHILPOT CURKAN. 

and to tlie country, upon the state of public affairs at home and 
abroad.] 

I insist that the measure is not, as it has been stated to be, 
a measure of mere internal poUcy ; it is a measure that in- 
volves the question of right and wrong, of just and unjust ; 
but it is more ; it is a measure of the most absolute necessity, 
which cannot be denied, and which cannot safely be delayed. 
I cannot foresee future events ; I cannot be appalled by the fu- 
ture, for I cannot see it ; but the present I can see, and I cannot 
but see that it is big with danger : it may be the crisis of po- 
litical life, or political extinction ; it is a time fairly to state 
to the country whether they have anything, and what, to j&ght 
for ; whether they are to struggle for a connexion of tyranny 
or of privilege ; whether the administration of England will 
let us condescend to forgive the insolence of her happier days ; 
or whether, as the beams of her prosperity have wasted and 
consumed us, so even the frost of her adversity shall perform 
the deleterious effects of fire, and burn upon our privileges and 
our hopes forever. 



PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 
May 15th, 1797. 



[Mr. W. Ponsonby, in a short prefatory speech, proposed his 
Resolutions on Parliamentary Reform. Before he moved any of 
them, specilically, he read them all to the House. They are in sub- 
stance as follow :] 

" Besolved, that it is indispensably necessary to a fandamental reform 
of the representation, that all disabilities on account of religion be for 
ever abolished, and that Catholics shall be admitted into the legislature, 
and all the great offices of state in the same extent, etc. , as Protestants 
now are. 

' That it is the indispensable right of the people of Ii-eland to be fully 
and fairly represented in parliameut. 



PAELIAMENTARY EEFORM. 489 

"That in order that the people may be fully enabled to exercise that 
right, the privilege of returning members for cities, boroughs, etc., in the 
present form, shall cease ; that each county be divided into districts, 
consisting of 6,000 houses each, each district to return two members to 
parliament. 

" That all persons possessmg freehold property to the amount of 40s. 
per annum ; all possessed of leasehold interests, of the value of ; 

all possessed of a house of the value of ; all who have resided for 

a certain number of years in any great city or town, following a trade ; 
and all who shall be free of any city, etc., by birth, marriage, or servi- 
tude, shall vote for members of j)arliament. 

" That seats in parliament shall endure for number of years. (The 
blanks were left to be filled up by the discretion of the House.)" 

I consider this as a measure of justice, with respect to the 
CathoHcs, and the people at large. The Catholics in former 
times groaned under the malignant folly of penal laws — wan- 
dered like herds upon the earth — or gathered under some 
thread-bare grandee, who came to Dublin, danced attendance 
at the Castle, was smiled on by the secretary, and carried back 
to his miserable countrymen the gracious. promise of favor and 
protection. They are no longer mean dependents, but owners 
of their country, and claiming simply and boldly, as Irishmen, 
the national privileges of men, and natives of their country. 

[Upon this part of the question, he went into a variety of very 
interesting topics, descriptive of their importance and their oppres- 
sions, which he attributed wholly to the wicked propagation of re- 
ligious antipathies, and concluded that their claim to perfect free- 
dom in their own land could be denied only by the grossest mahg- 
nity and tyranny.] 

I now proceed to answer the objections to the measure. I 
was extremely shocked to see the agent of a foreign cabinet 
rise up in the assembly that ought to represent the Irish na- 
tion, and oppose a motion that was made on the acknowledged 
and deplored corruption which has been imported from this 
country. Such an opposition is a proof of the charge, which 
I am astonished he could venture upon at so awful a crisis. 
I doubt whether the charge, or this proof of it, would appear 
most odious. However, I will examine the objections. It is said 
■ — It is not the time. This argument has become a jest in Ire- 



490 SELECT SPEECHES OF JOHN PHILPOT CUKEAN. 

land, for it lias been used in all times ; in war, in peace, in 
quiet, and in disturbance. It is the miserable, dilatory plea 
of persevering and stupid corruption, that wishes to postpone 
its fate by a promise of amendment, which it is resolved never 
to perform. Reform has become an exception to the proverb 
that says, there is a time for aU things ; but for Reform there 
is no time, because at all times corruption is more profitable 
to its authors than public virtue and propriety, which they 
know must be fatal to their views. As to the present time, ths 
objections to it are a compound of the most unblushing impu- 
dence and folly. Forsooth it would seem as if the House had 
yielded through fear. Personal bravery or fear are inapplica- 
ble to a pubhc assembly. I know no cowardice so despicable 
as the fear of seeming to be afraid. To be afraid of danger 
is not an unnatural sensation ; but to be brave in absurdity and 
injustice, merely from fear of having your sense or honesty im- 
puted to your own apprehension, is a stretch of folly which I 
have never heard of before. But the time is pregnant with ar- 
guments very different, indeed, from those I have . heard ; I 
mean the report of the Secret Committee, and the dreadful 
state of the country. The allegation is, that the people are 
not to have justice, because a rebellion exists within, and be- 
cause we have an enemy at our gates — because, forsooth, re- 
form is only a pretext, and separation is the object of the 
leaders. If a rebellion exist, every good subject ought to be 
detached from it. But if an enemj' threaten to invade us, it is 
only common sense to detach every subject from the hostile 
standard, and bring him back to his duty and his country. 

The present miserable state of Ireland — its distractions, its 
distresses, its bankruptcy, are the effects of the war, and it is 
the duty of the authors of that war to reconcile the people by 
the most timely and liberal justice ; the utmost physical 
strength should be cahed forth, and that can be done only by 
union. This is a subject so tremendous, I do not wish to 
dwell on it ; I will therefore leave it ; I wiU support a Reform 
on its own merits, and as a measure of internal peace at this 
most momentous juncture. Its merits are admitted by tlie ob- 
jection to the time, because the objection admits that at any 
other time it would be proper. For twenty years past there 



PAEUATilENTARY EEFOEM. 491 

was no man of any note in England or Ireland wlio did not 
consider the necessity of it as a maxim ; tliey all saw and con- 
fessed that the people are not represented, and that they have 
not the benefit of a mixed monarchy. They have a monarchy 
which absorbs the two other estates, and, therefore, they have 
the insupportable expense of a monarchy, an aristocracy, and 
a democracy, without the simplicity or energy of any one of 
those forms of government. In Ireland this is peculiarly fatal, 
because the honest representation of the people is swallowed 
in the corruption and intrigue of a cabinet of another country. 
From this may be deduced the low estate of the Irish people ; 
their honest labor is wasted in pampering their betrayers, in- 
stead of being employed, as it ought to be, in accommodating 
themselves and their children. On these miserable conse- 
quences of corruption, and which are all the fatal effects of in- 
adequate representation, I do not wish to dwell. To expatiate 
too much on them might be unfait, but to suppress them would 
be treason to the public. 

It is said, that reform is only a pretence, and that separation 
is the real object of leaders ; if this be so, confound the lead- 
ers by destroying the pretext, and take the followers to your- 
selves. You say there are one hundred thousand ; I firmly 
believe there is three times the number. So much the better 
for you : if these seducers can attach so many followers to 
rebellion, by the hope of reform, through blood, how much 
more readily will you engage them, not by the promise, but 
the possession, and without blood? You allude to the British 
fleet ; learn from it to avoid the fatal consequence that may 
follow even a few days' delay of jastice. It is said to be 
only a pretext ; I am convinced of the contrary — I am con- 
vinced the.people are sincere, and would be satisfied by it. I 
think so from the perseverance in petitioning for it for a num- 
ber of years ; I think so, because I think a monarchy, proper- 
ly balanced by a fair representation of the people, gives as 
X3erfect hberty as the most celebrated republics of old. But, 
of the real attraction of this object of reform, you have a 
proof almost miraculous : the desu-e of reform has annihilated 
religious antipathy, and united the country. 

In the history of mankind it is the only instance of so fatal 



492 SELECT SPEECHES OF JOHN PHILPOT CURKAN. 

a religious fanaticism being discarded by tlie good sense of 
mankind, instead of dying slowly by the development of its 
folly. And I am persuaded the hints thrown out this night, to 
make the different sects jealous of each other, will be a detect- 
ed trick, and will only unite them still more closely. The 
CathoHcs have given a pledge to then- countrymen of their sin- 
cerity and their zeal, which cannot fail of producing the most 
firm rehance ; they have solemnly disclaimed all idea of what 
is called Emancipation, except as a part of that reform without 
which their Presbyterian brethren could not be free. 

Reform is a necessary change of mildness for coercion. The 
latter has been tried ; what is its success ? The convention 
bill was passed to punish the meetings at Dungannon, and 
those of the CathoHcs : the government considered the Cath- 
ohc concessions as defeats that called for vengeance, and 
cruelly have they avenged them. But did that act, or those 
which followed it, put down those meetings ? The contrary 
was the fact. It concealed them most foolishly. When popu- 
lar discontents are abroad, a wise government should put 
them into a hive of glass. You hid them. The association, 
at first, was small ; the earth seemed to drink it as a rivulet, 
but it only disappeared for a season. A thousand streams, 
through the secret windings of the earth, found their way to 
one course, and swelled its waters, until at last, too mighty .to 
be contained, it bursts out a great river, fertihzing by its exu- 
dations, or terrifying by its cataracts. This is the effect of our 
penal code : it swelled sedition into rebellion. What else could 
be hoped from a system of terrorism ? Fear is the most tran- 
sient of all the passions — it is the warning that nature gives 
for self-preservation. But when safety is unattainable, the 
warning must be useless, and nature does not, therefore, give 
it. Administration, therefore, mistook the quahty of penal 
laws ; they were sent out to abolish conventions, but they did 
not pass the threshold — they stood sentinels at the gates. You 
think that penal laws, hke great dogs, will wag their tails to 
their masters, and bark only at their enemies. You are mis- 
taken — they turn and devour those they are meant to protect 
and are harmless where they are intended to destroy. 

I see gentlemen laugh ; I see they are still very ignorant of 



PABLIAMENTABY REFORM. 493 

the nature of fear ; it cannot last ; neither while it does can it 
be concealed. The feeble ghmmering of a forced smile is a 
light that makes the cheek look paler. Trust me, the times 
are too humanized for such systems of government. Humani- 
ty will not execute them, but humanity will abhor them, and 
those who wish to rule by such means. This is not theory ; 
the experiment has been tried, and proved. You hoped much, 
and, I doubt not, meant well by those laws ; but they have 
miserably failed you — it is time to try milder methods. You 
have tried to force the people : the rage of your penal laws 
was a storm that only drove them in groups to shelter. Youi 
convention law gave them that organization which is justly an 
object of such alarm ; and the very proclamation seems to have 
given them arms. Before it is too late, therefore, try the bet- 
ter force of reason, and concihate them by justice and human- 
ity. The period of coercion in Ireland is gone, nor can it ever 
return untU the people shah return to the folly and to the nat- 
ural weakness of disunion. Neither let us talk of innovation ; 
the progress of nature is no innovation. The increase of peo- 
ple, with the growth of mind, is no innovation ; it is no way 
alarming, unless the growth of our minds lag behind. If we 
think otherwise, and think it an innovation to depart from the 
folly of our infancy, ^ve should come here in our swaddling- 
clothes, we should not innovate upon the dress, more than the 
understanding of the cradle. 

As to the system of peace now proposed, you must take it 
on principles — they are simply two, the abolition of religious 
disabilities, and the representation of the people. I am confident 
the effects would be everything to be wished. The present 
alarming discontent will vanish, the good will be separated 
from the evil-intentioned ; the friends of mixed government 
in Ireland are many ; every sensible man must see that it gives 
all the enjoyment of rational liberty if the people have their 
due place in the state. This system would make us inviucible 
against a foreign or domestic enemy ; it would make the em- 
pire strong at this important crisis ; it would restore to us lib- 
erty, industry, and peace, which I am satisfied can never by 
any other means be restored. Instead, therefore, of abusing 
the people, let us remember that there is no physical strength 



494 SELECT SPEECHES OF JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN. 

but theirs, and conciliate them by justice and reason. I am 
censured heavily for having acted for them in the late prose- 
cutions. I feel no shame at such a charge, except that, at such 
a time as this, to defend the people should be held out as an 
imputation upon a King's counsel, when the people are prose- 
cuted by the state. I think every counsel is the property of his 
fellow-subjects. If, indeed, because I wore his Majesty's gown, 
I had declined my duty, or done it weakly or treacherously — 
if I had made that gown a mantle of hypocrisy, and betrayed 
my client, or sacrificed him to any personal view, I might, per- 
haps, have been thought wiser by those who have blamed me, 
but I should have thought myself the basest villain upon 
earth. 

The plan of peace, proposed by a Reform, is the only means 
that I and my friends can see left to save us. It is certainly a 
time for decision, and not for half measures. I agree that 
unanimity is indispensable. The House seems pretty nearly 
unanimous for force ; I am sorry for it, for I bode the worst 
from it. I will retire from a scene where I can do no good — ■ 
where I certainly would interrupt that unanimity. I cannot, 
however, go, without a parting entreaty, that gentlemen will 
reflect on the awful responsibihty in which they stand to their 
country and to their conscience, before they set the example to 
the people of abandoning the constitution and the law, and 
resorting to the terrible expedient of force 

[Grattan followed him, closing the debate, his speech, and the 
attendance of the opposition, in these words :] 

" Before they are to be reformed, rebellion, you tell us, must be 
subdued. You tried that experiment in America. America required 
self-legislation ; you attempted to subdue America by force of angry 
laws, and hj force of arms — you exacted of America unconditional 
submission — the stamp act and the tea tax were only pretexts. So 
you said. The object, you said, was separation. So here the Ke- 
form of Parliament, you say, and Catholic Emancipation are only 
pretexts ; the object you say is separation. And here you exact 
unconditional submission : "You must subdue before you reform" 
— indeed ! Alas, you think so ; but you forget you subdue by re- 
forming. It is the best conquest you can obtain over your own 
people. But let me suppose you succeed ; what is your success ? 



THE CASE OF PETEli FINNERTY. 495 

A military government, a perfect despotism, a hapless yictory over 
the principles of a mild government and a mild constitution. 
But what may be the ultimate consequence of such a victory ? — 
a separation. Let us suppose that the war continues, and' that your 
conquest over your own people is interrupted by a French invasion. 
What would be your situation then ? I do not wish to think of it, 
but I wish you to think of it, and to make a better preparation against 
such an event than such conquests and such victories. "When you 
consider the state of your arms abroad, and the ill-assured state of 
your government at home, precipitating on such a system, surely you 
should pause a httle. Even on the event of a peace you are ill-se- 
cured against a future war, which the state of Ireland, under such a 
system, would be too apt to invite ; but in the event of the continua- 
tion of the war, your system is perilous, indeed. I speak without 
asperity — I speak without resentment ; I speak, perhaps, my delu- 
sion, but it is my heartfelt conviction — I speak my apprehension 
for the immediate state of our liberty, and for the ultimate state 
of the empire. I see, or I imagine I see, in this system, every- 
thing which is dangerous to both. I hope I am mistaken — at least, 
I hope I exaggerate ; possibly I may. If so, I shall acknowledge 
my error with more satisfaction than is usual in the acknowledg- 
ment of error. I cannot, however, banish from my memory the 
lesson of the American war ; and yet at that time the English 
government was at the head of Europe, and was possessed of re- 
sources comparatively unbroken. If that lesson has no effect on 
ministers, surely I can suggest nothing that will. We have offered 
you our measure — ^you will reject it ; we deprecate yours — you will 
persevere. Having no hopes left to persuade or dissuade, and 
having discharged our duty, we shall trouble you no more, and, 
after this day, shall not attend the House of Commons !" 



THE CASE OF PETER FINNERTY. 

December 22, 1797. 



[The Counsel for the prosecution were the Attorney-General, 
(Arthur Wolfe,) Prime Sergeant, Solicitor-General, (Toler,) Messrs. 
Eidgeway, Townshend, and Worthington ; for the defence, Curran, 
Fletcher, M'Nally, Sampson, Shears, and Orr. The Attorney- 



496 SELECT SPEECHES OF JOHN PHTLPOT CUKitAlM. 

General stated the case, and produced witnesses, who proved print- 
ing and publication. Mr. Fletcher opened the defence, and called 
Lord Yelverton and Mr. E. Cooke (Chief Clerk in the Secretary's 
office) to prove the truth of the libel ; but the. evidence was soon 
stopped, as illegal, and then Curran spoke as follows :] 

Never did I feel myself so sunk under the importance of 
any cause. To speak to a question of this kind, at any time, 
would require the greatest talent and the most mature delib- 
eration ; but to be obliged, without either of those advantages, 
to speak to a subject that has so deeply shaken the feelings of 
this already irritated and agitated nation, is a task that fills 
me with embarrassment and dismay. 

Neither my learned colleague nor myself received any in- 
struction or license until after the jury were actually sworn, 
and we both of us came here under an idea that we should not 
take any part in the trial. This circumstance I mention, not 
as an idle apology for an effort that cannot be the subject of 
either praise or censure, but as a call upon you, gentlemen of 
the jury, to supply the defects of my, efforts, by a double exer- 
tion of your attention. 

Perhaps I ought to regret that I cannot begin with any 
compliment, that may recommend me or my client personally 
to your favor. A more artful advocate would probably begin 
his address to you by compliments on your patriotism, and hj 
felicitating his client upon the happy selection of his jury, and 
upon that unsuspected impartiality in which, if he was inno- 
cent, he must be safe. You must be conscious, gentlemen, 
that such idle verbiage as that, could not convey either my 
sentiments, or my client's upon that subject. You know, and 
we know, upon what occasion you are come, and by whom 
you have been chosen ; you are come to try an accusation 
professedly brought forward by the state, chosen by a sheriff 
who is appointed by our accuser. 

[The Attorney-General, interrupting Mi-. Curran, said the .sheriff 
was elected by the city, and that the observation was therefore 
unfounded.] 

Be it so [continued Mr. Curran] : I will not" now stop to in- 
quire whose property the city may be considered to be ; but 
the learned gentleman seems to forget, that the election by 



THE CASE OF PETER FINNEETY. 497 

that city, to whomsoever it may belong, is absolutely void with- 
out the approbation of that very Lord Lieutenant, who is the 
prosecutor in this case. I do therefore repeat, gentlemen, that 
not a man of you has been called to that box by the voice of 
my chent ; that he has had no power to object to a single 
man among you, though the Crown has ; and that you your- 
selves must feel under what influence you are chosen, or for 
what quahfications you are particularly selected. At a mo- 
ment when this wretched land is shaken to its centre by the 
dreadful conflicts of the different branches of the community ; 
between those who call themselves the partisans of liberty, and 
those who call themselves the partisans of power ; between the 
advocates of infliction and the advocates of suffering ; upon 
such a question as the present, and at such a season, can any 
man be at a loss to guess to what class of character and opin- 
ion, a friend to either party would resort for that jury, which 
was to decide between both ? I trust, gentlemen, you know 
me too well to suppose that I could be capable of treating you 
with any personal disrespect : I am speaking to you in the 
honest confidence of your fellow-citizen. When I aUude to 
those unworthy imputations of supposed bias, or passion, or 
partiality, that may have marked you out for your present sit- 
uation, I do so in order to warn you of the ground on which 
you stand, of the point of awful responsibility in which you 
are placed, to your conscience, and to your country ; and to 
remind you, that if you have been put into that box from any 
unwortliy reliance on your complaisance or your servihty, you 
have it in your power, before you leave it, to refute and to 
punish so vUe an expectation, by the integrity of your verdict ; 
to remind you, too, that you have it in your power to show 
to as many Irishmen as yet linger in this country, that all law 
and justice have not taken their flight with our prosperity and 
peace ; that the sanctity of an oath, and the honesty of a 
juror are not yet dead amongst us ; and that if our courts of 
justice are superseded by so many strange and terrible tribu- 
nals, it is not because they are deficient either in wisdom or 
virtue. 

Gentlemen, it is necessary that you should have a clear idea, 
first, of the law by which this question is to be decided ; sec- 



498 SELECT SPEECHES OF JOHN PHILPOT CUEEAN. 

oncUy, of the nature and object of the prosecution. As to the 
first, it is my duty to inform you, that the law respecting hbels 
has been much changed of late. Heretofore, in consequence 
of some decisions of the judges in Westminster Hall, the jury 
was conceived to have no province but that of finding the truth 
of the innuendoes, and the fact of publication ; but the libel- 
lous nature of that publication, as well as the guilt or innocence 
of the pubhcation, were considered as exclusively belonging to 
the court. 

In a system like that of law, which reasons logically, no one 
erroneous x^rinciple can be introduced, without producing 
every other that can be deducible from it. If in the premises 
of any argument you admit one erroneous proposition, nothing 
but bad reasoning can save the conclusions from falsehood. 
So it has been with this encroachment of the court upon the 
province of the jury with respect to hbels. The moment the 
court assumed as a principle that they, the court, were to de- 
cide upon everything but the pubhcation ; that is, that they 
were to decide upon the question of libel or no libel, and upon 
the guilt or innocence of the intention, which must form the 
essence of every crime, the guilt or innocence must of necessity 
have ceased to be material. 

You see, gentlemen, clearly, that the question of intention is 
a mere question of fact. 

Now the moment the court determined that the jury was not 
to try that question, it followed of necessity that it was not to 
be tried at aU ; for the court cannot try a question of fact. 
When the court said that it was not triable, there was no way 
of fortifying that extraordinary proposition, except by assert- 
ing that it was not material. The same erroneous reasoning 
carried them another step, still more mischievous and unjust ; 
if the intention had been material, it must have been decided 
upon as a mere fact, under all its circumstances. Of these cir- 
cumstances, the meanest understanding can see that the lead- 
ing one must be the truth or the falsehood of the publication ; 
but having decided the intention to be immaterial, it followed 
that the truth must be equally immaterial, and under the law 
so distorted, any man in England who published the most un- 
deniable truth and with the j)urest intention, might be pun- 



THE CASE OF PETEE FINNERTY. 499 



posing on the prosecutor the necessity of proving his guilt, or 
his getting any opportunity of showing his innocence. 

I am not in the habit of speaking of legal institutions with 
disrespect ; but I am warranted in condemning that usurpa- 
tion upon the right of juries, by the authority of that statute 
by which your jurisdiction is restored. For that restitution of 
justice, the British subject is indebted to the splendid exertions 
of Mr. Fox and Mr. Ersldne, those distinguished supporters of 
the constitution and of the law ; and I am happy to say to you, 
that though we can claim no share m the glory they have so 
justly acquired, we have the full benefit of their success; for 
you are now sitting under a similar act passed in this country, 
which makes it your duty and right to decide on the entire 
question upon the broadest grounds, and under all its circum- 
stances, and of course, to determine by your verdict, whether 
this publication be a false and scandalous libel ; false in fact, 
and published with the seditious purpose alleged, of bringing 
the government into scandal, and instigating the people to 
insurrection. 

Having stated to you, gentlemen, the great and exclusive ex- 
tent of your jurisdiction, I shall beg leave to suggest to you a 
distinction that will strike you at first sight ; and that is, the 
distinction between public animadversions upon the character 
of private individuals, and those which are written upon meas- 
ures of government, and the persons who conduct them. 

The former may be called personal, and the latter political 
publications. No two things can be more different in their na- 
ture, nor in the point of view in which they are to be looked 
on by a jury. The criminality of a mere personal libel con- 
sists in this, that it tends to a breach of the peace ; it tends to 
all the vindictive paroxysms of exasperated vanity, or to the 
deeper or more deadly vengeance of irritated pride. The truth 
is, few men see at once that they cannot be hurt so much as 
they think by the mere battery of a newspaper. They do not 
reflect that every character has a natural station, from which 
it cannot be effectually degraded, and beyond which it cannot 
be raised by the bawling of a news-hawker. If it is wantonly 
aspersed, it is but for a season, and that a short one, when it 



500 SELECT SPEECHES OF JOHN PHELPOT CUEKAN. 

emerges, like tlie moon from a passing cloud, to its original 
brightness. It is right, however, that the law, and that you, 
should hold the strictest hand over this kind of public anim- 
adversion, that forces humility and innocence from their 
retreat into the glare of public view ; that wounds and terri- 
fies, that destroys the cordiality and the peace of domestic 
hfe, and that, without eradicating a single vice, or single folly, 
plants a thousand thorns in the human heart. 

In cases of that kind, I perfectly agree with the law as stat- 
ed from the bench ; in such cases, I hesitate not to think, that 
the truth of a charge ought not to justify its publication. If a 
private man is charged with a crime, he ought to be prosecuted 
in a court of justice, where he may be punished if it is true, 
and the accuser, if it is false. But far differently do I deem 
of the freedom of political publication. The salutary restraint 
of the former species, which I talked of, is found in the gene- 
ral law of all societies whatever ; but the more enlarged free- 
dom of the press, for which I contend, in political publication, 
I conceive to be founded in the peculiar nature of the British 
constitution, and to follow directly from the contract on which 
the British government hath been placed by the Revolution. 
By the British constitution, the power of the state is a trust, 
committed by the people, upon certain conditions, by the vio- 
lation of which, it may be abdicated by those who hold, and 
resumed by those who conferred it. The real security, there- 
fore, of the British sceptre, is, the sentiment and opinion of 
the people, and it is, consequently, their duty to observe the 
conduct of the government; and it is the privilege of every 
man to give them full and just information upon that impor- 
tant subject. Hence the liberty of the press is inseparably 
twiited with the Hberty of the people. 

The press is the great public monitor : its duty is that of the 
historian and the witness, that " nil falsi audeat, nil veri non 
aiideat dicere-^' that its horizon shall extend to the farthest 
verge and hmit of truth ; that it shall speak truth to the King 
in. the hearing of the people, and to the people in the hearing 
of the King ; that it shall not perplex either the one or the 
other with false alarm, lest it lose its characteristic veracity, 
and become an unheeded warner of real danger : lest it should 



THE CASE OP PETER FINNERTY. 501 

Tainly warn tnem of that sin, of which the inevitable conse- 
quence is death. This, gentlemen, is the great privilege upon 
which you are to decide ; and I have detained you the longer, 
because of the late change of the law, and because of some 
observations that have been made, which I shall find it ne- 
cessary to compare with the principles I have now laid down. 

And now, gentlemen, let us come to the immediate subject of 
the trial, as it is brought before you, by the charge in the 
indictment, to which it ought to have been confined ; and also, 
as it is presented to you by the statement of the learned coun- 
sel who has taken a much wider range than the mere limits of 
the accusation, and has endeavored to force upon your consid- 
eration extraneous and irrelevant facts, for reasons which it is 
not my duty to explain. 

The indictment states simply that Mr. Finnerty has pub- 
lished a false and scandalous hbel upon the Lord Lieutenant 
of Ireland, tending to bring his government into disrepute, and 
to alienate the affections of the people ; and one would have ex- 
pected, that, without stating any other matter, the counsel for 
the Crown Avould have gone directly to the proof of this alle- 
gation ; but he has not done so ; he has gone to a most extra- 
ordinary length, indeed, of preliminary observation, and an 
allusion to facts, and sometimes an assertion of facts, at wliich, 
I own, I was astonished, until I saw the drift of these allusions 
and assertions. Whether you have been fairly dealt with by 
him, or are now honestly dealt with by me, you must be the 
judges. 

He has been pleased to say, that this prosecution is brought 
against this letter signed " Marcus," merely as a part of what 
he calls a system of attack upon the government, by the pa- 
per called " The Press." As to this, I will only ask you 
v»rhether you are fairly dealt with ? whether it is fair treatment 
to raen upon their oaths, to insinuate to them, that the gener- 
al character of a newspaper (and that general character 
founded merely upon the assertion of the prosecutor) is to 
have any influence upon their minds, when they are to judge 
of a particular publication ? I will only ask you, what men 
you must be supposed to be, when it is thought, that even in 
a court of justice, and with the eyes of the nation upon you, 



502 SELECT SPEECHES OF JOHN PHILPOT CUREAN. 

you can be the dupes of that trite and exploded expedient, so 
scandalous of late in this country, of raising a vulgar and 
mercenary cry against whatever man, or whatever principle, it 
is thought necessary to put down ; and I shall, therefore, 
merely leave it to your own pride to suggest upon what founda- 
tion it could be hoped, that a senseless clamor of that kind 
could be echoed back by the yell of a jury upon their oaths, I 
trust you see that this has nothing to do with the question. 

Gentlemen of the jury, other matters have been mentioned 
which I must rejDeat for the same purpose ; that of showing 
you that they have nothing to do with the question. The 
learned counsel has been pleased to say, that he comes for- 
ward in this prosecution as the real advocate for the liberty of 
the press, and to protect a mild and a merciful government 
from its licentiousness ; and he has been pleased to add, that 
the constitution can never be lost while its freedom remains, 
and that its hcentiousness alone can destroy that freedom. As to 
that, gentlemen, he might as well have said, that there is only 
one mortal disease of which a man can die : I can die the 
death inflicted by tyranny ; and when he comes forward to ex- 
tinguish this paper, in the ruin of the printer, by a state pro- 
secution, in order to prevent its dying of licentiousness, you 
must judge how candidly he is treating you, both in the fact 
and in the reasoning. Is it in Ireland, gentlemen, that we are 
told licentiousness is the only disease that can be mortal to 
the press ? Has he heard of nothing else that has been fatal 
to the freedom of publication ? I know not whether the prin- 
ter of the Northern Star may have heard of such things in his 
captivity ; but I know that his wife and children are well ap- 
prised that a press may be destroyed in the open day, not by 
its own licentiousness, but by the licentiousness of a military 
force. 

As to the sincerity of the declaration, that the state has pro- 
secuted, in order to assert the freedom of the press, it starts a 
train of thought — of melancholy retrospect and direful pros- 
pect — to which I did not think the learned counsel would have 
wished you to commit your minds. It leads you naturally to 
reflect at what times, from w^hat motives^ and with what conse- 
quences, the government has displayed its patriotism, by pro- 



THE CASE OP PETER FINNERTY. 503 

secutions of this sort. As to the motives, does history give 
you a single instance in which the state has been provoked to 
these conflicts, except by the fear of truth and by the love fo 
vengeance ? Have you ever seen the rulers of any country 
bring forward a prosecution from motives of filial piety, for 
libels upon their departed ancestors ? Do you read that Eliz- 
abeth directed any of those state prosecutions against the 
libels which the divines of her times had written against her 
Catholic sister, or against the other libels which the same gen- 
tlemen had written against her Protestant father ? No, gen- 
tlemen, we read of no such thing ; but we know she did bring 
forward a prosecution from motives of personal resentment ; 
and we know that a jury was found time-serving and mean 
enough to give a verdict which she was ashamed to carry into 
effect. 

I said the learned counsel drew you back to the times that 
have been marked by these miserable conflicts. I see you 
turn your thoughts to the reign of the second James. I see 
you turn your eyes to those pages of governmental abandon- 
ment, of popular degradation, of expiring liberty, of merciless 
and sanguinary persecution ; to that miserable period, in which 
the fallen and abject state of man might have been almost an 
argument in the mouth of the atheist and the blasphemer, 
against the existence of an all-just and an all- wise Eirst Cause ; 
if the glorious era of the Kevolution that followed it had not 
refuted the impious inference, by showing that if a man de- 
scends, it is not in his own proper motion ; that it is with labor 
and with pain ; that he can continue to sink only until, by the 
force and pressure of the descent, the spring of his immortal 
faculties acquires that recuperative energy and effort that hurries 
him as many miles aloft ; that he sinks but to rise again. It 
is at that period that the state seeks for shelter in the destruc- 
tion of the press ; it is in a period hke that, that the tyrant 
prepares for an attack upon the people, by destroying the lib- 
erty of the press ; by taking away that shield of wisdom and 
of virtue, behind which the people are invulnerable ; in whose 
pure and polished convex, ere the lifted blow has faUen, he 
beholds his own image, and is turned into stone. It is at those 
periods that the honest man dares not speak, because truth is 



504 SELECT SPEECHES OP JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN. 

too clreadM to be told ; it is then humanity has no ears, because 
humanity has no tongue. It is then the proud man scorns to 
speak, but, hke a physician baffled by the wayward excesses of a 
dying patient, retires indignantly from the bed of an unhappy 
wretch, whose ear is too fastidious to bear the sound of whole- 
some advice, whose palate is too debauched to bear the salu- 
tary bitter of the medicine that might redeem him ; and there- 
fore leaves him to the felonious piety of the slaves that talk to 
him of life, and strip him before he is cold. 

I do not care, gentlemen, to exliaust too much of your at- 
tention, by following this subject through the last century with 
much minuteness ; but the facts are too recent in your mind 
not to show you, that the liberty of the press and the hberty 
of the people sink and rise together ; that the liberty of speak- 
ing and the liberty of acting have shared exactly the same 
fate. You must have observed in England, that their fate has 
been the same in the successive vicissitudes of their late de- 
pression ; and sorry I am to add, that this country has exhib- 
ited a melancholy proof of their inseparable destiny, through 
the various and fitful stages of deterioration, down to the pe- 
riod of their final extinction, when the constitution has given 
place to the sword, and the only printer in Ireland who dares 
to speak for the people is now in the dock. 

Gentlemen, the learned counsel has made the real subject of 
this prosecution so small a part of his statement, and has led 
you into so wide a range — certainly as necessary to the object, 
as inapplicable to the subject of this prosecution — that I trust 
you will think me excusable in having somewhat followed his 
example. Glad am I to find that I have the authority of the 
same example for coming at last to the subject of this trial. I 
agree with the learned counsel that the charge made against 
the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland is that of having grossly and 
inhumanly abused the royal prerogative of mercy, of which 
the King is only the trustee for the benefit of the people. The 
facts are not controverted. It has been asserted that their 
truth or falsehood is indifferent, and they are shortly these, as 
they appear in this publication. 

William Orr was indicted for having administered the oath 
of a United Irishman. Every man now knows what the oath 
is ; that it is simply an engagement, first, to promote a bro- 



THE CASE OP PETER FINNERTY. 505 

fcherhood of affection among men of all religious distinctions ; 
secondly, to labor for the attainment of a parliamentarj^ re- 
form ; and thirdly, an obligation of secrecy, which was added 
to it when the convention law made it criminal and punish- 
able to meet by any public delegation for that purpose. 

After remaining upwards of a year in jail, Mr. Orr was 
brought to his trial ; was prosecuted by the state ; was sworn 
against by a common informer of the name of Wheatley, Avho 
himself had taken the obligation ; and was convicted under the 
Insurrection Act, which makes the administering such an ob- 
ligation felony of death. The jury recommended Mr. Orr to 
mercy, and the judge, with a humanity becoming his character, 
transmitted the recommendation to the noble prosecutor in 
this case. Three of the jurors made solemn affidavit in court, 
that liquor had been conveyed into their box ; that they were 
brutally threatened by some of their fellow-jurors with crimi- 
nal prosecution if they did not find the prisoner guilty ; and 
that under the impression of those threats, and worn down by 
watching and intoxication, they had given a verdict of guilty 
against him, though they believed him in their consciences to 
be innocent. That further inquiries were made, which ended 
in a discovery of the infamous life and character of the in- 
former ; that a respite was therefore sent at once, and twice, 
and thrice, to give time, as Mr. Attorney-General has stated, 
for his Excellency to consider whether mercy could be ex- 
tended to him or not ; and that with a knowledge of all these 
circumstances, his Excellency did finally determine that mercy 
should not be extended to him ; and that he was accordingly 
executed upon that verdict. 

Of this publication, which the indictment charges to be false 
and seditious, Mr. Attorney-General is pleased to say, that the 
design of it is to bring the courts of justice into contempt. As 
to this point of fact, gentlemen, I beg to set you right. 

To the administration of justice, so far as it relates to the 
judges, this publication has not even an allusion in any part 
n^entioned in this indictment ; it relates to a department of 
justice, that cannot begin until the duty of the judge closes. 
Sorry should I be, that, with respect to this unfortunate 
man, any censure should be flung on those judges who presid- 



500 SELECT SPEECHES OF JOHN PHELPOT CUKRAN. 

eel at liis trial, with the mildness and temper that became 
them upon so awful an occasion as the trial of life and death. 
Sure am I, that if they had been charged with inhumanity or 
injustice, and if they had condescended at all to prosecute the 
reviler, they would not have come forward in the face of the 
pubhc to say, as has been said this day, that it was immaterial 
whether the charge was true or not. Sure I am, their first 
object would have been to show that it was false, and readily 
should I have been an eye-witness of the fact, to have dis- 
charged the debt of ancient friendsliip, of private respect, and 
of public duty, and upon my oath to have repelled the false- 
hood of such an imputation. 

Upon this subject, gentlemen, the j)resence of those vener- 
able judges restrains what I might otherwise have said, nor 
should I have named them at all, if I had not been forced to 
do so, and merely to undeceive you, if you have been made to 
beheve their characters to have any community of cause what- 
ever with the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. To him alone it is 
confined, and against him the charge is made, as strongly, I 
suppose, as the writer could find words to express it, that the 
Viceroy of Ireland has cruelly abused the prerogative of royal " 
mercy, in, suffering a man under such circumstances to perish 
like a common malefactor. For this Mr. Attorney-General 
calls for your conviction as a false and scandalous hbel ; and 
after stating himself every fact that I have repeated to you, 
either from his statement, or from the evidence, he tells you, 
that you ought to find it false and scandalous, though he 
almost in words admits that it is not false, and has resisted 
the admission of the evidence by which we offered to prove 
every word of it to be true. 

And here, gentlemen, give me leave to remind you of the 
parties before you. 

The traverser is a printer, who foUows that profession for 
bread, and who, at a time of great public misery and terror, 
when the people are restrained by law from debating under 
any delegated form ; when the fcAv constituents that we have 
are prevented by force from meeting in their own persons, to 
deliberate or to petition ; when every other newspaper in Ire- 
land is put down by force, or j)urcliased by the administration 



THE CASE OF PETEK EINNEETY. 507 

(though here, gentlemen, perhaps I ought to beg your pardon 
for stating without authority ; I recollect when we attempted 
to examine as to the number of newspapers in the pay of the 
castle, that the evidence was objected to) ; at a season like 
this, Mr. Finnerty has had the courage, perhaps the folly, to 
print the publication m question, for no motive under heaven 
of malice or vengeance, but in the mere duty which he owes to 
his family, and to the public. 

His prosecutor is the King's minister in Ireland ; in that 
character does the learned gentlemen mean to say, that his 
conduct is not a fair subject of public observation ? Where 
does he find his authority for that in the law or practice of the 
sister country? Have the virtues, or the exalted station, or the 
general love of his people preserved the sacred person even 
of the royal master of the prosecutor, from the asperity and 
intemperance of public censure, unfounded as it ever must be, 
with any personal respect to his Majesty, in justice or truth ? 
Have the gigantic abilities of Mr. Pitt, have the more gigantic 
talents of his great antagonist, Mr. Fox, protected either of 
them from the insolent familiarity, and, for aught we know, the 
injustice with which writers have treated them ? "What latitude 
of invective has the King's minister escaped upon the subject 
of the present war ? Is there an e]3ithet of contumely, or of 
reproach, that hatred or that fancy could suggest, that is not 
publicly lavished upon them ? Do you not find the words, " ad- 
vocate of despotism," "robber of the public treasure," " mur- 
derer of the King's subjects," " debaucher of the public mor- 
ality," " degrader of the constitution," " tarnisher of the British 
empire," by frequency of use lose all meaning whatsoever, and 
dwindle into terms, not of any peculiar reproach, but of ordi- 
nary appellation ? 

And why, gentlemen, is this permitted in that country ? I'll 
tell you why ; because in that country they are yet wise enough 
to see that the measures of the state are the proper subject for 
the freedom of the press ; that the principles relating to per- 
sonal slander do not apply to rulers or to ministers ; that to 
pubhsh an attack upon a public minister, without any regard 
to truth, but merely because of its tendency to a breach of the 
peace, would be ridiculous in the extreme. What breach of 



508 SELECT SPEECHES OF JOHN PHILPOT CRERAN. 

the peace, gentlemen, I pray you, in such a case ? Is it the 
tendency of such pubHcations to provoke Mr. Pitt or Mr. Dun- 
das to break the head of the writer, if they should happen to 
meet him ? No, gentlemen ; in that country this freedom is 
exercised, because the people feel it to be their right ; and it 
is wisely suffered to pass by the state, from a consciousness 
that it would be vain to oppose it ; a consciousness confirmed 
by the event of every incautious experiment. It is suffered to 
pass from a conviction that, in a court of justice at least, the 
bulwarks of the constitution will not be surrendered to the 
state ; and that the intended victim, whether clothed in the 
humble guise of honest industry, or decked in the honors of 
genius, and virtue, and philosophy, whether a Hardy or a 
Tooke, will find certain protection in the honesty and spirit of 
an English jury. 

But, gentlemen, I suppose Mr, Attorney-General will scarce- 
ly wish to carry his doctrine altogether so far. Indeed, I re- 
member, he declared himself a most zealous advocate for the 
liberty of the press. I may, therefore, even according to him, 
presume to make some observations on the conduct of the ex- 
isting government. I should wish to know how far he sup- 
poses it to extend ; is it to the composition of lampoons and 
madrigals, to be sung down the grates by ragged ballad-mon- 
gers to kitchen-maids and footmen ? I will not suj)pose that 
he means to confine it to the ebullitions of Billingsgate, to 
those cataracts of ribaldry and scurrihty, that are daily spout- 
ing upon the miseries of our wretched fellow-sufferers, and the 
unavailing efforts of those who have vainly labored in their 
cause. I will not suppose that he confines it to the poetic H- 
cense of a birth-day ode ; the laureat would not use such 
language ! In which case I do not entirely agree with him, 
that the truth or the falsehood is as perfectly immaterial to 
the law, as it is to the laureate ; as perfectly unrestrained by 
the law of the land, as it is by any law of decency or shame, 
of modesty or decorum. 

But as to the privilege of censure or blame, I am sorry that 
the learned gentleman has not favored you with his notion of 
the liberty of the press. 

Suppose an Irish Yiceroy acts a very little absurdly, may the 



THE CASE OP PETER FINNERTY. 509 

press venture to be respectfully comical upon that absmxlity ? 
The learned counsel does not, at least in terms, give a negative 
to that. But let me treat you honestly, and go further, to a 
more material point ; suppose an Irish Viceroy does an act 
that brings scandal upon his master, that fills the mind of a 
reasonable man with the fear of approaching despotism ; that 
leaves no hope to the people of preserving themselves and 
their children from chains, but in common confederacy for 
common safety. What is that honest man in that case to do ? 

I am sorry the right honorable advocate for the hberty of 
the press has not told you his opinion, at lea.st in any express 
words. I will therefore venture to give you my far humbler 
thoughts upon the subject. 

I think an honest man ought to tell the people frankly and 
boldly of their peril ; and I must say I can imagine no villainy 
greater than that of his holding a traitorous silence at such a 
crisis, except the villainy and baseness^ of prosecuting him, or 
of finding him guilty for such an honest discharge of his public 
duty. And I found myself on the known principle of the 
revolution of England, namely, that the Grown itself may be 
abdicated by certain abuses of the trust reposed ; and that 
there are possible excesses of arbitrary power, which it is not 
only the right, but the bounden duty, of every honest man to 
resist, at the risk of his fortune and. his hfe. 

Now, gentlemen, if this reasoning be admitted, and it can- 
not be denied ; if there be any possible event in which the 
people are obliged to look only to themselves, and are justified 
in doing so ; can you be so absurd as to say, that it is lawful 
for the people to act upon it when it unfortunately does arrive, 
but that it is criminal in any man to tell them that the miser- 
able event has actually arrived, or is imminently approaching ? 
Far am I, gentlemen, from insinuating that (extreme as it is) 
our misery has been matured into any deplorable crisis of this 
kind, from which I pray that the Almighty God may forever 
preserve us ! But I am putting my principles upon the strong- 
est ground, and most favorable to my opponents, namely, that 
it never can be criminal to say anything of government but 
what is false ; and I put this in the extreme, in order to de- 
monstrate to you, a fortiori, that the privilege of spealdng truth 



510 SELECT SPEECHES OF JOHN PHILPOT CUERAN. 

to the people, wliicli holds in the last extremity, must also ob- 
tain in eveiy stage of inferior importance ; and that, however 
a court may have decided, before the late act, that the truth 
was immaterial in case of hbel, since that act, no honest jury 
can be governed by such principle. 

Be pleased now, gentlemen, to consider the grounds upon 
which this publication is called a libel, and criminal. 

Mr. Attorney-General tells you it tends to excite sedition and 
insurrection. Let me again remind you, that the truth of this 
charge is not denied by the noble prosecutor. What is it then 
that tends to excite sedition and insurrection ? " The act that 
is charged upon the prosecutor, and is not attempted to be de- 
nied ? And, gracious God ! gentlemen of the jury, is the pub- 
lic statement of the King's representative tliis, " I have done 
a deed that must fill the mind of every feehng or thinking man 
with horror and indignation ; that must alienate every man 
that knows it from the King's government, and endanger the 
separation of this distracted empire : the traverser has had the 
guilt of publishing this fact, which I myself acknowledge, and 
I pray you to find him guilty ?" Is this the case which the 
Lord Lieutenant of Ireland brings forward? Is this the prin- 
ciple for which he ventures, at a dreadf til crisis like the present, 
to contend in a court of justice ? Is this the picture which he 
wishes to hold out of himself to the justice and humanity of 
his own countrymen? Is this the history which he wishes to 
be read by the poor Irishmen of the South and of the North, 
by the sister nation, and the common enemy ? 

With the profoundest respect, permit me humbly to defend 
his Excellency, even against his own opinion. The guilt of 
this publication he is pleased to think consists in this, that it 
tends to insurrection. Upon what can such a fear be support- 
ed ? After the multitudes that have perished in this unhappy 
nation within the last three years, unhappiness which has been 
borne with a patience not paralleled in the history of nations, 
can any man suppose that the fate of a single individual could 
lead to resistance or insurrection ? 

But suppose that it might, what then ought to be the con- 
duct of an honest man ? Should it not be to apprise the gov- 
ernment of the country and the Viceroy — you will drive the 



THE CASE OF PETER FINNEETY. 511 

people to madness, if you persevere in such bloody counsels ; 
you will alienate the Irish nation ; you wiU distract the com- 
mon force ; and you will invite the common enemy ? Should 
not an honest man say to the people — the measure of your 
affliction is great, but you need not resort for remedy to any 
desperate expedients? If the King's minister is defective in 
humanity or wisdom, his royal master, your beloved sovereign, 
is abounding in both. At such a moment, can you be so 
senseless as not to feel, that any one of you ought to hold such 
language ; or is it possible you could be so infatuated, as to 
punish the man who was honest enough to hold it? — or is it 
possible that you could bring yourselves to say to your coun- 
try, that at such a season the press ought to sleep upon its 
post, or to act like the perfidious watchman on his round, that 
sees the villain wrenching the door, or the flames bursting from 
the windows, whUe the inhabitant is wrapt in sleep, and cries 
out that " 'tis] past five o'clock, the morning is fair, and all 
well." 

On this part of the case I shall only put one question to 
you. I do not affect to say it is similar in all its points ; I do 
not affect to compare the humble fortunes of Mr. Orr with the 
sainted names of Russell or Sidney ; still less am I willing to 
find any likeness between the present period and the year 
1688. But I will put a question to you, completely parallel in 
principle : When that unhappy and misguided monarch had 
shed the sacred blood, which their noble hearts had matured 
into a fit cement of revolution, if any honest Englishman had 
been brought to trial for daring to proclaim to the world his 
abhorrence of such a deed, what would you have thought of 
the English jury that could have said — we know in our hearts 
what he said was true and honest, but we will say, upon our 
oaths, that it was false and criminal ; and we will, by that base 
subserviency, add another item to the catalogue of public 
wrongs, and another argument for the necessity of an appeal 
to heaven for redress ? 

Gentlemen, I am perfectly aware that what I may say may 
be easily misconstrued ; but if you listen to me with the same 
fairness that T address you, I cannot be misunderstood. When I 
show you the full extent of your political rights and remedies ; 



512 SELECT SPEECHES OF JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN. 

when I answer those slanderers of Britisli liberty, who degrade 
the monarch into a despot, who pervert the steadfastness of law 
into the waywardness of will ; when I show you the inestima- 
ble stores of pohtical wealth, so dearly acquired by our ances- 
tors, and so solemnly bequeathed ; and when I show you how 
much of that precious inheritance has yet survived all the pro- 
digaUty of their posterity, I am far from saying that I stand 
in need of it all upon the present occasion. No, gentlemen, 
far am I indeed from such a sentiment. No man more deeply 
than myself deplores the present melancholy state of our un- 
happy country. Neither does any man more fervently wish for 
the return of peace and tranquillity, through the natural 
channels of mercy and of justice. I have seen too much of 
force and of violence to hope much good from the continuance 
of them on the one side or the retaliation of them on another. 
I have of late seen too much of political rebuilding, not to 
have observed, that to demolish is not the shortest way to 
repair. It is with pain and anguish that I should search for 
the miserable right of breaking ancient ties, or going in quest 
of new relations, or untried adventures. No, gentlemen ; the 
case of my client rests not upon these sad privileges of de- 
spair. I trust, that as to the fact, namely, the intention of ex- 
citing insurrection, you must see it cannot be found in this 
pubHcation ; that it is the mere idl'e, unsupported imputation 
of malice, or panic, or falsehood. And that as to the law, so 
far has he been from transgressing the li-mits of the constitu- 
tion, that whole regions lie between him and those hmits, 
which he has not trod, and which I pray to heaven it may 
never be necessary for any of us to tread. 

Gentlemen, Mr. Attorney-General has been pleased to open 
another battery vipon tliis publication, which I do trust I 
shall silence, unless I flatter myself too much in supposing 
that hitherto my resistance has not been utterly unsuccessful. 

He abuses it for the foul and insolent familiarity of its ad- 
dress. I do clearly understand his idea ; he considers the 
freedom of the press to be the license of offering that paltry 
adulation which no man ought to stoop to utter or to hear ; he 
supposes the freedom of the press ought to belike thefreedom 
of a king's jester, who, instead of reproving the faults of which 



THE CASE or PETEE FINNERTY. 513 

majestj ouglit to be ashamed, is base and cunning enougli, un- 
der the mask of servile and adulatory censure, to stroke down 
and pamper those vices of which it is foolish enough to be 
yain. He would not have the press presume to tell the Yice- 
roy, that'the prerogative of mercy is a trust for the benefit of 
the subject, and not a gaudy feather stuck int« the diadem to 
shake in the wind, and by the waving of the gorgeous plumage 
to amuse the vanity of the Avearer. He would not have it to 
say to him, that the discretion of the Crown as to mercy, is like 
the discretion of a court of justice as to law; and that in the 
one case, as well as the other, wherever the propriety of the ex- 
ercise of it appears, it is equally a matter of right. He would 
have the press all fierceness to the people, and all sycophancy 
to power ; he would consider the mad and frenetic outrages of 
authority, like the awful and inscrutable dispensations of Pro- 
vidence, and say to the unfeeling and despotic spoiler, in the 
blasphemed and insulted language of religious resignation, 
" the Lord hath given, and the Lord hath taken away, blessed 
be the name of the Lord." 

But let me condense the generality of the learned gentle- 
man's invective into questions that you can conceive. Does 
he mean that the air of this publication is rustic and uncourt- 
ly ? Does he mean, that when " Marcus" presumed to ascend 
the steps of the castle, and to address the Yiceroy, he did not 
turn on his toes as he ought to have done ? But, gentlemen, 
you are not a jury of dancing-masters : or does the learned 
gentleman mean that the language is coarse and vulgar ? If 
this be his complaint, my chent has but a poor advocate. 

I do not pretend to be a mighty grammarian, or a formid- 
able critic ; but I would beg leave to suggest to you, in serious 
humility, that a free press can be supported only by the ar- 
dor of men who feel the prompting sting of real or supposed 
capacity ; who write from the enthusiasm of virtue, or the am- 
bition of praise, and over whom, if you exercise the rigor of a 
grammatical censorship, you will inspire them with as mean 
an opinion of your integrity as of your wisdom, and inevitably 
drive them from their posts ; and if you do, rely upon it, you 
will reduce the spirit of publication, and with it the press oi 
this country, to what it for a long interval has been — the regis- 



514 SELECT SPEECHES OF JOHN PHELPOT CURRAN. 

ter of births, and fairs, and funerals, and tlie general abuse of 
the people and their friends. 

Gentlemen, in order to bring this charge of insolence and 
vulgarity to the test, let me ask you, whether you know of any 
language which could have adequately described the idea of 
mercy denied, where it ought to have been granted ; or of any 
phrase vigorous enough to convey the indignation which an 
honest man would have felt upon such a subject ? 

Let me beg of you for a moment to suppose that any one of 
you had been the writer of this very severe expostulation with 
the Viceroy, and that you had been the witness of the whole 
progress of this never-to-be-forgotten catastrophe. 

Let me suppose that you had known the charge upon which 
Mr. Orr was apprehended — the charge of abjuring that big- 
otry which had torn and disgraced his country — of pledging 
himself to restore the people of his country to their place in 
the constitution — and of binding himself never to be the be- 
trayer of his fellow-laborers in that enterprise : that you had 
seen him upon that charge removed from his industry, and 
confined in a jail; that through the slow and lingering pro- 
gress of twelve tedious months you had seen him confined in 
a dungeon, shut out from the common use of air and of his 
own hmbs ; that day after day you had marked the unhappy 
captive cheered by no sound but the cries of his family, or the 
clinking of chains ; that you had seen him at last brought to 
his trial; that you had seen the vile and perjured informer 
deposing against his life ; that you had seen the drunken, and 
worn-out, and terrified jury, give in a verdict of death ; that 
you had seen the same jury, when their returning sobriety had 
brought back their conscience, prostrate themselves before the 
humanity of the bench, and pray that the mercy of the Crown 
might save their characters from the reproach of an involun- 
tary crime, their consciences from the torture of eternal self- 
condemnation, and their souls from the indelible stain oi inno- 
cent blood. 

Let me suppose that you had seen the respite given, and 
that contrite and honest recommendation transmitted to that 
seat where mercy was presumed to dwell — that new and be- 
fore unheard-of crimes are discovered against the informer— 



THE CASE OF PETER FINNERTY. 515 

that the royal mercy seems to relent, and that a new respite is 
*^ent to the prisoner — that time is taken, as the learned coun- 
sel for the Crown has expressed it, to see whether mercy could 
be extended or not ! — that after that period of lingering delib- 
eration passed, a third respite is transmitted — that the un- 
happy captive himself feels the cheering hope of being re- 
stored to a family that he had adored, to a character that he 
had never stained, and to a country that he had ever loved — 
that you had seen his wife and children upon their knees, giv- 
ing those tears to gratitude, which their locked and frozen 
hearts could not give to anguish and despair, and imploring 
the blessings of Eternal Providence upon his head, who had 
graciously spared the father, and restored him to his children 
— that you had seen the olive branch sent into his little ark, 
but no sign that the waters had subsided, 

"Alas! 
Nor wife nor cliildren more shall he behold. 
Nor friends, nor sacred home !" 

Xo seraph mercy unbars his dungeon, and leads him forth to 
light and life ; but the minister of death hurries him to the 
scene of suffering and of shame, where, unmoved by the hos- 
tile array of artillery and armed men collected together, to se- 
cure, or to insult, or to disturb him, he dies with a solemn 
declaration of his innocence, and utters his last breath, in a 
prayer for the liberty of his country. 

Let me now ask you, if any of you had addressed the public 
ear upon so foul and monstrous a subject, in what language 
would you have conveyed the feehngs of horror and indigna- 
tion ? Would you have stooped to the meanness of quahfied 
complaint ? — would you have checked your feehngs to search 
for courtly and gaudy language ? — would you have been mean 
enough — ^but I entreat your forgiveness — I do not think mean- 
ly of you. Had I thought so meanly of you, I could not suf- 
fer my mind to commune with you as it has done ; had I 
thought you that base and vile instrument, attuned by hope 
and by fear" into discord and falsehood, from whose vulgar 



510 SELEGT SPEECHES OF JOHN PHILPOT CUREAN. 

string no groan of suffering could vibrate, no voice of integrity 
or honor could speak, let me honestly tell you, I should hav# 
scorned to fling my hand across it — I should have left it to a 
fitter minstrel. If I do not, therefore, grossly err in my opin- 
ion of you, I could use no language upon such a subject as 
this, that must not lag behind the rapidity of your feelings, 
and that would not disgrace those feelings, if it attempted to 
describe them. 

Gentlemen I am not unconscious that the learned counsel 
for the Crown seemed to address you with a confidence of a 
very different kind ; he seemed to expect from you a kind and 
respectful sympathy with the feelings of the Castle, and with 
the griefs of chided authority. Perhaps gentlemen, he may 
know you better than I do. If he does, he has spoken to you 
as he ought : he has been right in telling you, that if the rep- 
robation of this writer is weak, it is because his genius could 
not make it stronger ; he has been right in teUing you, that his 
language has not been braided and festooned as elegantly as 
it might — ^that he has not pinched the miserable plaits of his 
phraseology, nor placed his patches and feathers with that cor- 
rectness of millinery which became so exalted* a person. 

If you agree with him, gentlemen of the jury — if you think 
that the m0,n who ventures, at the hazard of his own hfe, to 
rescue from the deep the drowning honor of his country, you 
must not presume upon the guilty famiharity of plucking it 
up by the locks. I have no more to say ; do a courteous thing. 
Upright and honest jurors, find a civil and obliging verdict 
against the printer ! And when you have done so, march 
through the ranks of your fellow-citizens to your own homes, 
and bear their looks as you pass along. Betire to the bosom 
of your families and your children, and when you are presiding 
over the morahty of the parental board, tell those infants, who 
are to be the future men of Ireland, the history of this day. 
Form their young minds by your precepts, and confirm those 
precepts by your own example — teach them how discreetly al- 
legiance may be perjured on the table, or loyalty be forsworn 
in the jury-box ; and when you have done so, tell them the 
story of Orr — tell them of his captivity, of his children, of his 
crime, of his hopes, of his disappointments, of his courage, and 



THE CASE OF PETER FINNERTY. 517 

of liis deatli ; and when you find your little hearers hanging 
from your lips — when you see their eyes overflow with sympa- 
thy and sorrow — and their young hearts bursting with the 
pangs of anticipated orphanage — tell them that you had the 
boldness and the justice to stigmatize the monster who had 
dared to publish the transaction ! 

Gentlemen, I believe I told you before, that the conduct of 
the Viceroy was a small part, indeed, of the subject of this 
trial. If the vindication of his mere personal character had 
been, as it ought to have been, the sole object of this prosecu- 
tion, I should have felt the most respectful regret at seeing a 
person of his high consideration come forward in a court of 
pubhc justice in one and the same breath to admit the truth, 
and to demand the punishment of a publication like the pre- 
sent, to prevent the chance he might have had of such an ac- 
cusation being disbelieved, and, by a prosecution like this, to 
give to the passing stricture of a newspaper that life and body, 
and action and reality, to prove it to all mankind, and make 
the record of it indelible. Even as it is, I do own I feel the 
utmost concern that his name should have been soiled, by 
being mixed in a question of which it is the mere pretext and 
scapegoat. 

Mr. Attorney-General was too wise to state to you the real 
question, or the object which he wished to be answered by 
your verdict. Do you remember that he was pleased to say 
that this publication was a base and foul misrepresentation of 
the virtue and wisdom of the government, and a false and au- 
dacious statement to the world, that the King's government in 
Ireland was base enough to pay informers for taking away the 
lives of the people ? When I heard this statement to-day I 
doubted whether you were aware of its tendency or not. It is 
now necessary that I should explain it to you more at large. 

You cannot be ignorant of the great conflict between pre- 
rogative and privilege which hath convulsed the country for 
the last fifteen years ; when I say privilege, you cannot sup- 
pose that I mean the privilege of the House of Commons, — 
I mean the privileges of the people. 

You are no strangers to the various modes by which the peo- 
ple labored to approach their object. Delegations, conventions. 



518 SELECT SPEECHES OF JOHN PHILPOT CUERAN. 

remonstrances, resolutions, petitions to tlie parliament, petitions 
to the throne. 

It might not be decorous in this place to state to you, with 
any sharpness, the various modes of resistance that were em- 
ployed on the other side ; but you, all of you, seem old enough 
to remember the variety of acts of parliament that have been 
made, by which the people were deprived, session after session, 
of what they had supposed to be the known and established 
fundamentals of the constitution, the right of public debate, 
the right of pubhc petition, the right of bail, the right of trial, 
the right of arms for self-defence ; until the last, even the rehcs 
of popular privilege became superseded by a military force ; 
the press extinguished ; and the state found its last intrench- 
ment in the grave of the constitution. As httle can you be 
strangers to the tremendous confederations of hundreds of 
thousands of your countrymen, of the nature and objects of 
which such a variety of opinions have been propagated and 
entertained. 

The writer of this letter presumed to censure the recall of 
Lord Fitzwilliam, as well as the measures of the present Vice- 
roy, Into this subject I do not enter ; but you cannot your- 
selves forget that the conciliatory measures of the former noble 
lord had produced an almost miraculous unanimity in this 
country ; and much do I regret, and sure I am that it is not 
without pain you can reflect, how unfortunately the conduct of 
his successor has terminated. His intentions might have been 
the best ; I neither know them nor condemn them, but their 
terrible effects you cannot be. blind to. Every new act of co- 
ercion has been followed by some new symptom of discontent, 
and every new attack provoked some new paroxysm of resent- 
ment, or some new combination of resistance. 

In this deplorable state of affairs — convulsed and distracted 
within, and menaced b}^ a most formidable enemy from without 
— it was thought that public safety might be found in union and 
conciliation ; and repeated applications were made to the par- 
liament of this kingdom, for a calm inquiry into the complaints 
of the people. These applications were made in vain. 

Impressed by the same motives, Mr. Fox brought the same 
subject before the Commons of England, and ventured to as- 



THE CASE OE PETER FINNERTY. 519 

cribe the perilous state of Ireland to the severity of its govern- 
ment. Even his stupendous abilities, excited bj the Hvehest 
sympathy with our sufferings, and animated by the most ardent 
zeal to restore the strength with the union of the empire, were 
repeatedly exerted without success. The fact of discontent 
was denied — the fact of coercion was denied — and the conse- 
quence was, the coercion became more implacable, and the 
discontent more threatening and irreconcilable. 

A similar apphcation was made in the beginning of this 
session in the Lords of Great Britain, by our illustrious coun- 
tryman, (Lord Moira,) of whom I do not wonder that my 
learned friend should have observed, how much virtue can 
fling pedigree into the shade ; or how much the transient 
honor of a body inherited from man, is obscured by the lustre 
of an intellect derived from God. He, after being an eye- 
witness of this country, presented the miserable picture of 
what he had seen ; and, to the astonishment of every man in 
Ireland, the existence of those facts was ventured to be denied; 
the conduct of the Viceroy was justified and applauded ; and 
the necessity of continuing that conduct was insisted upon, as 
the only means of preserving the constitution, the peace, and 
the prosperity of Ireland. The moment the learned counsel 
had talked of this pubhcation as a false statement of the con- 
duct of the government, and the condition of the people, no 
man could be at a loss to see tha,t the awful question, which 
had been dismissed from the Commons of Ireland, and from 
the Lords and Commons of Great Britain, is now brought for- 
ward to be tried by a side wind, and, in a collateral way, by a 
criminal prosecution. 

The learned counsel has asserted that the paper which he 
prosecutes is only part of a system formed to misrepresent 
the state of Ireland and the conduct of its government. Do 
you not, therefore, discover that his object is to procure a 
verdict to sanction the parliaments of both countries in refus- 
ing an inquiry into your grievances ? Let me ask you, then, 
are you prepared to say, upon your oath, that those measures 
of coercion, which are daily practiced, are absolutely necessary, 
and ought to be continued ? It is not upon Finnerty you are 
sitting in judgment ; but you are sitting in judgment upon the 



520 SELECT SPEECHES OF JOHN PHILPOT CUREAN. 

lives and liberties of the inhabitants of more than half of Ire- 
land. You are to say that it is a foul proceeding to condemn 
the government of Ireland ; that it is a foul act, founded in 
foul motives, and origiuating in falsehood and sedition ; that 
it is an attack upon a government, under which the people are 
prosperous and happy; that justice is administered with 
mercy ; that the statements made in Great Britain are false — 
are the effusions of party or of discontent ; that all is mildness 
and tranquillity ; that there are no burnings — no transporta- 
tions ; that you never travel by the Hght of conflagrations ; 
that the jails are not crowded month after month, from which 
prisoners are taken out, not for trial, but for embarkation ! 
These are the questions upon which, I say, you must virtually 
decide. It is in vain that the counsel for the Crown may tell 
you that I am misrepresenting the case — that I am endeavor- 
ing to raise false fears, and to take advantage of your passions 
— that the question is, whether this paper be a libel or not — 
and that the ckcumstauces of the country have nothing to do 
with it. Such assertions must be vain. The statement of the 
counsel for the Crown has forced the introduction of those im- 
portant topics ; and I appeal to your own hearts whether the 
country is misrepresented, and whether the government is 
misrepresented. 

I tell you, therefore, gentlemen of the jury, it is not with 
respect to Mr. Orr, or Mr. Finnerty, that your verdict is now 
sought. You are called upon, on your oaths, to say, that the 
government is wise and merciful — the people prosperous and 
happy ; that mihtary law ought to be continued ; that the con- 
stitution could not with safety be restored to Ireland ; and 
that the statements of a contrary import by your advocates, 
in either country, are libellous and false. 

I tell you these are the questions ; and I ask you, if you 
can have the front to give the expected answer in the face of 
a community who know the country as well as you do ? Let 
me ask you, how you could reconcile with such a verdict, the 
jaUs, the tenders, the gibbets, the conflagrations, the murders, 
the proclamations that we hear of every day in the streets, 
and see every day in the country ? What are the prosecutions 
of the learned counsel himself, circuit after circuit ? Merciful 



THE CASE OF PETER EINNERTY. 521 

God ! what is the state of Ireland, and where shall you find 
the wretched inhabitant of this land! You may find him, 
perhaps, in a jail, the only place of security — I had almost 
said of ordinary habitation ! If you do not find him there, 
you may see him flying with his family from the flames of his 
own dwelling — ^lighted to his dungeon by the conflagration 
of his hovel ; or you may find his bones bleaching on the 
green fields of his country ; or you may find him tossing on the 
surface of the ocean, and mingling his groans with those tem- 
pests, less savage than his persecutors, that drift him to a re- 
turnless distance from his family and his home, without 
charge, or trial, or sentence. Is this a foul misrepresenta- 
tion ? Or can you, with these facts ringing in your ears, and 
staring in your face, say, upon your oaths, they do not exist ? 
You are called upon, in defiance of shame, of truth, of honor, 
to deny the sufterings under which you groan, and to flatter 
the persecutor that tramples you under foot. 

Gentlemen, I am not accustomed to speak of circumstances 
of this kind ; and though familiarized as I have been to them, 
when I come to speak of them, my power fails me — my voice 
dies within me. I am not able to call upon you. It is now 
I ought to have strength — it is now I ought to have energy and 
voice. But I have none ; I am hke the unfortunate state of 
the country — ^perhaps, hke you. This is the time in which I 
ought to speak, if I can, or be dumb forever • in which, if you 
do not speak as you ought, you ought to be dumb forever. 

But the learned gentleman is further pleased to say, that 
the traverser has charged the government with the encourage- 
ment of informers. This, gentlemen, is another smaU fact that 
you are to deny at the hazard of your souls, and upon the 
solemnity of your oaths. You are upon your oaths to say to 
the sister country, that the government of Ireland uses no such 
abominable instruments of destruction as informers. Let me 
ask you honestly, what do you feel, when in my hearing, when 
in the face of this audience, you are called upon to give a 
verdict that every man of us, and every man of you know, by 
the testimony of your own eyes, to be utterly and absolutely 
false ? I speak not now of the pubhc proclamation for in- 
formers, with a promise of secrecy, and of extravagant reward ; 



522 SELECT SPEECHES OF JOHN PHILPOT CUKRAN. 

I speak not of the fate of those horrid wretches who have 
been so often transferred from the table to the dock, and 
from the dock to the pillorj ; I speak of what your own eyes 
have seen, day after day, during the com-se of this commission, 
from the box where you are now sitting ; the number of horrid 
miscreants, who acknowledged, upon their oaths, that they 
had come from the seat of government — from the very cham- 
bers of the Castle — where they had been worked upon, by the 
fear of death and the hope of compensation, to give evidence 
against theh fellows ; that the mild, the wholesome, and mer- 
ciful councils of this government are holden over these cata- 
combs of Hving death, where the wretch that is buried a man, 
hes till his heart has time to fester and dissolve, and is then 
dug up a witness ! 

Is this a picture created by a hag-ridden fancy, or is it fact ? 
Have you not seen him, after his resurrection from that region 
of death and corruption, make hi-s appearance upon the table, 
the living image of life and of death,, and the supreme arbiter 
of both; Have you not marked when he entered, how the 
storm}^ wave of the multitude retired at his approach ? Have 
you not seen how the human heart bowed to the supremacy of 
his power, in the undissembled homage of deferential horror ? 
how his glance, like the lightning of heaven, seemed to rive 
the body of the accused, and mark it for the grave, while his 
voice warned the devoted wretch of woe and death — a death 
which no innocence can escape, no art elude, no force resist, no 
antidote prevent. There was an antidote — a jm'or's oath ! — 
but even that adamantine chain, that bound the integ ity of 
man to the throne of eternal justice, is solved and molten in 
the breath that issues from the informer's mouth ; conscience 
swings from her moorings, and the appalled and affrighted 
juror consults his own safety in the surrender of the victim : 

" Et qu£e sibi quisqiie timebat, 
Unius in miseri exitium conversa tulere." 

Informers are worshipped in the temple of justice, even as the 
devil has been worshipped by Pagans and savages — even so in 
this wicked country, is the informer an object of judicial idola- 
try — even so is he soothed by the music of human groans — 



THE CASE OE PETER FINNEETY. 523 

even so is lie placated and incensed by the fumes and by the 
blood of human sacrifices. 

Gentlemen, I feel I must have tired your patience ; but I 
have been forced into this length by the prosecutor, who has 
thought fit to introduce those extraordinary topics, and to 
bring a question of mere pohtics to trial, under the form of a 
criminal prosecution. I cannot say I am surprised that this 
has been done, or that you should be solicited by the same in- 
ducements, and from the same motives, as if your verdict was 
a vote of approbation. I do not wonder that the government 
of Ireland should stand appalled at the state to which we are 
reduced. I wonder not that they should start at the public 
voice, and labor to stifle or contradict it. I wonder not that at 
this arduous crisis, when the very existence of the empire is at 
stake, and when its strongest and most precious limb is not girt 
with the sword for battle, but pressed by the tourniquet for am- 
putation ; when they find the coldness of death already begun 
in those extremities where it never ends ; that they are terri- 
fied at what they have done, and wish to say to the surviving 
parts of that empire, "they cannot say that we did it." I 
wonder not that they should consider their conduct as no im- 
material question for a court of criminal jurisdiction, and wish 
anxiously, as on an inquest of blood, for the kind acquittal of 
a friendly jury. 

I wonder not that they should wish to close the chasm they 
have opened, by flinging you into the abyss. But trust me, my 
countrymen, you might perish in it, but you could not close it ; 
trust me, if it is yet possible to close it, it can be done only by 
truth and honor ; trust me, that such an effect could no more 
be wrought by the sacriflce of a jury, than by the sacrifice of 
Orr. 

As a state measure, the one would be as unwise and unavail- 
ing as the other ; but while you are yet upon the brink, while 
you are yet visible, let me, before we part, remind you once 
more of your awful situation. 

You are upon a great forward ground, with the people at 
jowv back, and the government in your front. You have 
neither the disadvantages nor the excuses of jurors a century 
ago. No, thank God ! never was there a stronger characteristic 



524 SELECT SPEECHES OP JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN. 

distinction between those times, upon whicli no man can reflect 
without horror, and the present. You have seen this trial con- 
ducted with mildness and patience by the court. We have 
now no Jefferies, with scurvy and vulgar conceits, to browbeat 
the prisoner and perplex his counsel. Such has been the im- 
provement of manners, and so calm the confidence of integrity, 
that during the defence of accused persons, the judges sit 
quietly, and show themselves worthy of their situation, by 
bearing, with a mild and merciful patience, the little extrava- 
gances of the bar, as you should bear with the little extrava- 
gances of the press. Let me then turn your eyes to that pat- 
tern of mildness in the bench. The press is your advocate ; 
bear with its excess — bear with everything but its bad inten- 
tion. If it come as a villainous slanderer, treat it as such ; but 
if it endeavor to raise the honor and glory of your country, re- 
member that you reduce its power to a nonentity, if you stop 
its animadversions upon public measures. You should not 
check the efforts of genius, nor damp the ardor of patriotism. 
In vain will you deshe the bird to soar, if you meanly or madly 
steal from it its plumage. Beware lest, under the pretence of 
bearing down the Hcentiousness of the press, you extinguish it 
altogether. BeAvare how you rival the venal ferocity of those 
miscreants, who rob a printer of the means of bread, and claim 
from deluded royalty the reward of integrity and allegiance. 
Let me, therefore, remind you, that though the day may soon 
come when our ashes shall be scattered before the winds of 
heaven, the memory of what you do cannot die ; it will carry 
down to your posterity your honor or your shame. In the 
presence and in the name of that ever living God, I do there- 
fore conjure you to reflect, that you have your characters, your 
consciences, that you have also the character, perhaps the 
ultimate destiny of your country, in your hands. In that awful 
name, I do conjure you to have mercy upon your country and 
yourselves, and so judge now, as you will hereafter be judged ; 
and I do now submit the fate of my cHent, and of that country 
which we have yet in common, to your disposal. 



TRIAL OF PATEICK FINNEY. 525 

TRIAL OF PATEICK FINNEY, FOR HIGH TREASON. 
January 16, 1798. 



[On the 31st of May, 1797, Patrick Finney was arrested at Tuite's 
public house, in Thomas Street. He was indicted for High Trea- 
son, at the Commission held in Dabhn, in July, 1797, and on Tues^ 
day, the 16th of January, 1798, was brought to trial. The chief 
witness for the prosecution was Jenny O'Brien, a hired informer.] 

My lords, and gentlemen of the jury. In the early part of 
this trial, I thought I should have had to address you on the 
most important occasion possible, on this side of the grave, a 
man laboring for life, on the casual strength of an exhausted, 
and, at best, a feeble advocate. But, gentlemen, do not imag- 
ine that I riss tinder any such impressions ; do not imagine 
that I approach you sinking under the hopeless difficulties of 
my cause. I am not now soliciting your indulgence to the in- 
adequacy of my powers, or artfully enlisting your passions at 
the side of my client. No, gentlemen ; but I rise with what of 
law, of conscience, of justice, and of constitution, there exists 
within this realm, at my back, and, standing in front of that 
great and poAverful alliance, I demand a verdict of acquital for 
my client ! "What is the opposition of evidence ? It is a tis- 
sue which requires no strength to break through ; it vanishes 
at the touch, and is sundered into tatters. 

The right honorable gentleman who stated the case in the 
first stage of this trial, has been so kind as to express a reli- 
ance, that the counsel for the prisoner would address the jury 
with the same candor which he exenjphfied on the part of the 
Crown ; readily and confidently do I accept the compliment, 
the more particularly, as in my cause I feel no temptation to 
reject it. ; Life can present no situation wherein the humble 
powers of man are so awfully and so divinely excited, as in de- 
fence of a fellow-creature placed in the circumstances of my 
client ; and if any labors can peculiarly attract the gracious 



526 SELECT SPEECHES OF JOHN PHILPOT CUREAN. 

and approving eye of heaven, it is when God looks down on a 
human being assailed bj human turpitude, and struggluag with 
practices against which the Deity has placed his special canon, 
when he said " Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy 
neighbor ; thou shalt do no murder." 

Gentlemen, let me desire you again and again to consider 
all the circumstances of this man's case, abstracted from the 
influence of prejudice and habit ; and if aught of passion as- 
sumes dominion over you, let it be of that honest, generous 
nature that good men must feel when they see an innocent man 
depending on their verdict for his life ; to this passion I feel 
myself insensibly yielding ; but unclouded, though not un- 
warmed, I shall, I trust, proceed in my great duty. 

Wishing to state my cHent's case with all possible succinct- 
ness which the nature of the charge admits, I am glad my 
learned colleague has acquitted himself on this head already 
to such an extent, and with such ability, that anything I can 
say will chance to be superfluous ; in truth, that honesty of 
heart, and integrity of principle, for which all must give him 
credit, uniting with a sound judgment and sympathetic heart, 
have given to his statement all the advantages it could have 
derived from these qualities. 

He'has truly said that " the declaratory act, the 25th of Ed- 
ward III., is that on which all charges of high treason are 
founded ;" and I trust the observation will be deeply engraven 
on your hearts. It is an act made to save the subject from the 
vague and wandering uncertainty of the law. It is an act 
which leaves it no longer doubtful whether a man shall incur 
conviction by his own conduct, or the sagacity of Crown con- 
struction : whether he shall sink beneath his own guilt; or the 
cruel and barbarous refinement of Crown prosecution. It has 
been most aptly called the blessed act ; and oh ! may the 
great God of justice and of mercy give repose and eternal 
blessing to the souls of those honest men by whom it was en- 
acted ! By this law, no man shall be convicted of high trea- 
son, but on provable evidence ; the overt acts of treason, as 
explained in this law, shall be stated clearly and distinctly in 
the charge ; and the proof of these acts shall be equally clear 



TBIAL OF PATKICK PINNEY. 527 

and distinct, in order that no man's life may depend on a par- 
tial or wicked allegation. It does everything for the prisoner 
which he could do himself ; it does everything but utter the 
verdict, which alone remains with you, and which, I trust, you 
will give in the same pure, honest, saving spirit, in which that 
act was formed. Gentlemen, I would call it an omnipotent act, 
if it could possibly appall the informer from our courts of jus- 
tice ; but law cannot do it, rehgion cannot do it ; the feelings 
of human nature frozen in the depraved heart of the wretched 
informer, cannot be thawed ! 

Law cannot prevent the envenomed arrow from being point- 
ed at the intended victim ; but it has given him a shield in the 
integrity of a jury ! Everything is so clear in this act, that all 
must understand ; the several acts of treason must be recited, 
and provable conviction must follow. What is provable 
conviction ? Are you at a loss to know ? Do you think if a 
man comes on the table, and says, " By virtue of my oath, I 
know of a conspiracy against the state, and such and such per- 
sons are engaged in it," do you think that his mere allegation 
shall justify you in a verdict of conviction ? A witness coming 
on this table, of whatsoever description, whether the noble lord 
who has been examined, or the honorable judges on the bench, 
or Mr. James O'Brien, who shall declare upon oath that a man 
bought powder, ball, and arms, intending to kill another, this 
is not provable conviction ; the unlawful intention must be 
shown by cogency of e^ddence, and the credit of the witness 
must stand strong and unimpeached. The law means not that 
infamous assertion or dirty ribaldry is to overthrow the char- 
acter of a man ; even in these imputations, flung against the 
victim, there is fortunately something detergent, that cleanses 
the character it was destined to befoul. 

In stating the law, gentlemen, I have told you that the overt 
act must be laid and proved by positive testimony of untainted 
witnesses ; and in so saying, I have only spoken the language 
of the most illustrious writers on the law of England. 

I should, perhapS; apologize to you for detaining your at- 
tention so long on these particular points, but that in the pres- 
ent disturbed state of the pubhc mind, and in the abandon- 
ment of principle, which it but too frequently produces, I think 



528 SELECT SPEECHES OF JOHN PHILPOT CUERAN. 

I cannot too strongly imj)ress you with the purity of legal dis- 
tinction, so that your souls shall not be harrowed with those 
torturing regrets, which the return of reason would bring along 
with it, were you, on the present occasion, for a moment to re- 
sign it to the subjection of your passions ; for these, though 
sometimes amiable in their impetuosity, can never be dignified 
and just, but under the control of reason. 

The charge against the prisoner is two-fold : compassing 
and imagining the King's death, and adhering to the King's 
enemies. To be accurate on this head is not less my intention 
than it is my interest ; for if I fall into errors, they will not 
escape th6 learned counsel who is to come after me, and whose 
defections will not fail to be made in the correct spirit of 
Crown prosecution. 

Gentlemen, there are no fewer than tlurteen overt acts, as 
described, necessary to support the indictment ; these, however, 
it is not necessary to recapitulate. The learned counsel for 
the Crown has been perfectly candid and correct in saying 
that if any of them support either species of treason charged 
in the indictment, it will be sufficient to attach the guilt. I do 
not complain that on the part of the Crown it was not found 
expedient to point out which act or acts went to support the 
indictment ; neither will I complain, gentlemen, if you fix your 
attention particularly on the circumstances. 

Mr. Attorney-General has been pleased to make an observa- 
tion, which drew a remark from my colleague, with which I 
fully agree, that the atrocity of a charge should make no im- 
pression on you. It was th,e judgment of candor and Hberahty, 
and should be yours ; nor though you should more than an- 
swer the high opinion I entertain of you, and though your 
hearts betray not the consohng confidence which your looks 
inspire, yet do not disdain to increase your stock of candor 
and hberahty, from whatsoever source it flows; though the 
abundance of my chent's innocence may render him independ- 
ent of its exertions, yom' country wants it all. You are not to 
suffer impressions of loyalty, or an enthusiastic love for the 
sacred person of the King, to give your judgments the small- 
est bias. You are to decide from the evidence which you 
have heard ; and if the atrocity of the charge were to have 



TRIAL OF PATEIOK FINNEY. 629 

any influence with you, it slioulcl be that of rendering you 
more incredulous to the possibility of its truth. 

I confess I cannot conceive a greater crime against civilized 
society, be the form of government what it may, whether mon- 
archical, republican, or, I had almost said, despotic, than at- 
tempting to destroy the life of the person holding the execu- 
tive authority ; the counsel for the Crown cannot feel a greater 
abhorrence against it than I do ; and happy am I, at this mo- 
ment, that I can do justice to my principles, and the feelings 
of my heart, without endangering the defence of my client ; 
and that defence is, that your hearts would not feel more re- 
luctant to the perpetration of the crimes with which he is 
charged, than the man who there stands at the bar of his 
country, waiting until you shall clear him from the foul and 
unmerited imputation, until your verdict, sounding Hfe and 
honor to his senses, shall rescue him from the dreadful fascina- 
tion of the informer's eye. 

The overt acts in the charge against the prisoner are many, 
and all a^^parently of the same nature, but they, notwithstand- 
ing, admit of a very material distinction. This want of candor 
I attribute to the base imposition of the prosecutor on those 
who brought him forward. 

You find at the bottom of the charge a foundation-stone at- 
tempted to be laid by O'Brien, — the deliberations of a society 
of United Irishmen, and on this are laid all the overt acts. I 
said the distinction was of moment, because it is endeavored 
to be held forth to the public, to all Europe, that, a-t a time 
hke this, of peril and of danger, there are, in one province 
alone, one hundred and eleven thousand of your countrymen 
combined for the purpose of destroying the King, and the 
tranquillity of the country, which so much depends on him, an 
assertion which you should consider of again and again, before 
you give it any other existence than it derives from the at- 
tainting breath of the informer. If nothing should induce 
that consideration but the name of Irishman, the honors of 
which joxL share, a name so fouUy, and, as I shall demonstrate, 
so falsely aspersed, if you can say that one fact of O'Brien's 
testimony deserves belief, all that can from thence be inferred 
is, that a Q-reat combination of mind and will exists on some 



•530 SELECT SPEECHES OF JOHN PHILPOT CUEEAN. 

public subject. What says tbe written evidence on tbat sub- 
ject ? 

What are the obligations imposed by the test-oath of the 
society of United Irishmen ? Is it unjust to get rid of rehgious 
differences and distinctions ? Would to God it were possible. 
Is it an offence against the state, to promote a full, free, and 
adequate representation of all the people of Ireland in par- 
liament ? If it be, the text is full of its own comment, it needs 
no comment of mine. As to the last clause, obliging to secrecy : 
Now, gentlemen of the jury, in the hearing of the court, I 
submit to the opposite counsel this question. I will make my 
adversary my arbiter. Taking the test-oath, as thus written, 
is there anything of treason in it ? However objectionable it 
may be, it certainly is not treasonable. 

I admit there may be a colorable combination of words to 
conceal a really bad design ; but to what evils would it not ex- 
pose society, if, in this case, to suppose were to decide. A 
high legal authority thus speaks on this subject : " Strong, in- 
deed, must the evidence be which goes to prove that any man 
can mean, by words, anything more than what is conveyed in 
their ordinary acceptation." If the test of any particular 
community were an open one — if, like the London Correspond- 
ing Society, it was to be openly published, then, indeed, there 
might be a reason for not using words in their common ap- 
plication ; but, subject to no public discussion, at least not 
intended to be so, why should the proceedings of those men, 
or the obligation by which they are connected, be expressed 
in the phraseology of studied concealment ? If men meet in 
secret, to talk over how best the French can invade this coun- 
try, to what purpose is it that they take an engagement differ- 
ent in meaning? Common sense rejects the idea ! 

Gentlemen, having stated these distinctions, I am led to the 
remaining divisions of the subject you are to consider. I ad- 
mit, that because a man merely takes this obhgation of union, 
it cannot prevent his becoming a traitor if he pleases ; but the 
question for you to decide on would then be, whether every 
man who takes it must necessarily be a traitor ? 

Independent of that engagement, have any superadded facts 
been proved against the prisoner ? What is the evidence of 



TKIAL OF PATRICK FINNEY. 531 

O'Brien? Wliat has he stated? Here, gentlemen, let mo 
claim the benefits of that great privilege, which distinguishes 
trial by jury in this country from all the world. Twelve men, 
not emerging from the must and cobwebs of a study, ab- 
stracted from human nature, or only acquainted with its 
extravagances; but twelve men, conversant with life, and 
practiced in those feelings which mark the common and 
necessary intercourse between man and man, such are you, 
gentlemen. 

How then does Mr. O'Brien's tale hang together ? Look to 
its commencement. He walks along Thomas Street, in the 
open day, . (a street not the least populous in this city,) and is 
accosted by a man who, without any preface, tells him he'll be 
murdered before he goes half the street, unless he becomes a 
United Irishman ! Do you think this is a probable story ? 
Suppose any of you, gentlemen, be a United Irishman, or a 
Freemason, or a Friendly Brother, and that you meet me 
walking innocently along, just like Mr. O'Brien, and meaning 
no harm, would you say, " Stop, Mr. Curran, don't go further, 
you'll be murdered before you go half the street, if you do not 
become a United Irishman, a Freemason, or a Friendly 
Brother ?" Did you ever hear so coaxing an invitation to felo- 
ny as this ? " Sweet Mr. James O'Brien ! come in and save 
your precious life— come in and take an oath, or you'll be 
murdered before you go half the street ! Do, sweetest, dear- 
est Mr. James O'Brien, come in, and do not risk your valua- 
ble existence." What a loss had he been to his King, whom 
he loves so marvellously ! Well, what does poor Mr. O'Brien 
do? Poor, dear man, he stands petrified with the magnitude 
of his danger, — all his members refuse their office, — ^lie can 
neither run from the danger, nor call out for assistance ; his 
tongue cleaves to his mouth, and his feet incorporate with the 
paving-stones; it is in vain that his expressive eye silently 
implores protection of the passenger ; he yields at length, as 
men have done, and resignedly submits to his fate. He then 
enters the house, and being led into a room, a parcel of men 
make faces at him ; but mark the metamorphosis : well may it 
be said, that " miracles will never cease ;" he who feared to 
resist in open air, and in the face of the public, becomes a 



532 SELECT SPEECHES OF JOHN PHILPOT CUREAN. 

bravo when pent up in a room, and environed by sixteen men, 
and one is obliged to bar the door, whUe another swears him, 
which after some resistance is accordingly done, and poor Mr. 
O'Brien becomes a United Irishman, for no earthly purpose 
whatever, but merely to save his sweet life. 

But this is not all, — the pill so bitter to the percipiency of 
his loyal palate, must be w^ashed down ; and, lest he should 
throw it off his stomach, he is filled up to the neck with beef 
and whiskey. What further did they do ? 

Mr. O'Brien, thus persecuted, abused, and terrified, would 
have gone and lodged his sorrows in the sympathetic bosom of 
the major ; but to prevent him even this little solace, they 
made him drunk. The next evening they used him in the like 
barbarous manner ; so that he was not only sworn against his 
will, but, — poor man, — he was made drunk against his inclina- 
tion. Thus was he besieged with united beefsteaks and whis- 
key ; and against such potent assailants not even Mr. O'Brien 
could prevail. 

Whether all this whiskey that he had been forced to drink 
has produced the effect or not, Mr. O'Brien's loyalty is better 
than his memory. In the spirit of loyalty he became pro- 
phetic, and told Lord Portarlington the circumstances relative 
to the intended attack on the ordnance stores full three weeks 
before he had obtained the information through moral agency. 
Oh ! honest James O'Brien ! Let others vainly argue on logi- 
cal truth and ethical falsehood ; but if I can once fasten him 
to the ring of perjury, I will bait him at it, until his testimony 
shall fail of j)roducing a verdict, although human nature were 
as vile and monstrous in you as she is in him ! He has made 
a mistake ! but surely no man's life is safe if such evidence 
were admissible : what argument can be founded on his testi- 
mony, when he swears he has jjerjured himself, and that any- 
thing he says must be false ? I must -not believe him at all, 
and by a paradoxical conclusion, supi^ose, against " the dam- 
nation" of his own testimony, that he is an honest man ! 

Strongly as I feel my interest keep pace with that of my 
cHent, I would not defend him at the expense of truth ; I seek 
not to make the witness worse than he is : whatever he may 
be, God Almighty convert his mind ! May his reprobation, — 



TEIAL OP PATEICK PINNEY. 533 

but I beg liis pardon, — let your verdict stamp that currency 
on his credit ; it will have more force than any casual remarks 
of mine. How this contradiction to Mr. O'Brien's evidence 
occurred, I am at no loss to understand. He started from the 
beginning with an intention of informing against some person, 
no matter against whom ; and whether he ever saw the pris- 
oner at the time he gave the information to Lord Portarling- 
ton, is a question ; but none, that he fabricated the story for 
the purpose of imposing on the honest zeal of the law officers 
of the Crown. 

Having now glanced at a part of this man's evidence, I do 
not mean to part v/ith him entirely ; I shall have occasion to 
visit him again ; but before I do, let me, gentlemen, once 
more im^oress upon your minds the observation which my col- 
league applied to the laws of high treason, that if they are not 
explained on the statute-book, they are explained on the 
hearts of all honest men ; and, as St. Paul says, " though they 
know not the law, they obey the statutes thereof." The 
essence of the charge submitted to your consideration tends to 
the dissolution of the connexion between Ireland and Great 
Britain. 

I own it is with much warmth and self-gratulation that I 
feel this calumny answered by the attachment of every good 
man to the British constitution. I feel, — I embrace its prin- 
ciples ; and when I look on you, the proudest benefit of that 
constitution, I am relieved from the fears of advocacy, since I 
place my client under the influence of its sacred shade. This 
is not the idle sycophancy of words. It is not crying " Lord ! 
Lord !" but doing " the will of my Father who is in heaven." 
If my cHent were to be tried by a jury of Ludgate Hill shop- 
keepers, he would, ere now, be in his lodging. The law of 
England would not suffer a man to be cruelly butchered in a 
court of justice. The law of England recognizes the possibil- 
ity of villains thirsting for the blood of their fellow-creatures ; 
and the people of Ireland have no cause to be incredulous of 
the fact. 

In that country, St. Paul's is not more public than the charge 
made against the poorest creatm^e that crawls upon the soil of 
England. There must be two witnesses to convict the prisoner 



534: SELECT SPEECHES OF JOHN PHILPOT CUERAN. 

of higli treason. The prisoner must have a copy of the jarors' 
names, bj whom he may eventually be tried ; he must have a 
list of the witnesses that are to be produced against him, that 
they may not, vampire-like, come crawhng out of the grave to 
drink his blood ; but that, by having a list of their names and 
places of abode, he may inquke into their characters and 
modes of life, that, if they are infamous, he may be enabled to 
defend himself against the attacks of their perjury, and their 
subornation. There must, I say, be two witnesses, that the 
jury may be satisfied, if they beheve the evidence, that the 
prisoner is guilty ; and if there be but one witness, the jury 
shall not be troubled with the idle folly of listening to the 
prisoner's defence. If there be but one witness, there is the 
less possibility of contradicting him ; he the less fears any de- 
tection of his murderous tale, having only infernal communica- 
tion between him and the author of all evil ; and when on the 
table, which he makes the altar of his sacrifice, however com- 
mon men may be affected at sight of the innocent victim, it 
cannot be supposed that the prompter of his perjury will insti- 
gate him to retribution : this is the law in England, and God 
forbid that Irishmen should so differ, in the estimation of the 
law, from Englishmen, that their blood is not equally worth 
preserving. I do not, gentlemen, apply any part of this ob- 
servation to you ; you are Irishmen yourselves, and I know you 
will act proudly and honestly. The law of England renders 
two witnesses necessary, and one witness insufficient, to take 
away the life of a man on a charge of high treason. This is 
founded on the principle of common sense, and common justice ; 
for, unless the subject were guarded by this wise prevention, 
every wretch who could so pervert the powers of invention, as 
to trump up a tale of treason and conspiracy, would have it in 
his power to defraud the Crown into the most abominable and 
afflicting acts of cruelty and oppression. 

Gentlemen of the jury, though from the evidence which has 
been adduced against the prisoner, they have lost their value, 
yet had they been necessary, I must tell you, that my chent 
came forward under a disadvantage of great magnitude, the 
absence of two witnesses very material to his defence ; I am 



TEIAL OF PATEICK FINNEY. 535 

not now at liberty to say, what I am instructed would have 
been proved by May, and Mr. Eoberts. 

But, you will ask, Avhy is it not Mr. Eoberts here ? Recol- 
lect the admission of O'Brien, that he threatened to settle him, 
and you will cease to wonder at his absence, when, if he came, 
the dagger was in preparation to be plunged into his heart. I 
said Mr. Eoberts was absent ; I correct myseK ; no ! in effect 
he is here : I appeal to the heart of that obdurate man, 
(O'Brien,) what would have been his (Eoberts') testimony, if he 
had dared to venture a personal evidence on this trial ? Gra- 
cious God ! is a tyranny of this kind to be borne with, where 
law is said to exist ? Shall the horrors which surround the in- 
former, the ferocity of his countenance, and the terrors of his 
voice, cast such a wide and appalling influence, that none dare 
approach and save the victim, which he marks for ignominy 
and death ! 

Now, gentlemen, be pleased to look to the rest of O'Brien's 
testimony : he tells you there are one hundred and eleven 
thousand men in one province, added to ten thousand of the 
inhabitants of the metropolis, ready to assist the object of an 
invasion ! Gentlemen, are you prepared to say that the king- 
dom of Ireland has been so forsaken by aU principles of hu- 
manity and of loyalty, that there are now no less than 111,000 
men sworn by the most solemn of all engagements, and con- 
nected in a deadly combination to destroy the constitution of 
the country, and to invite the common enemy, the French, to 
invade it — are you prepared to say this by your verdict ? When 
you know not the intentions or the means of that watchful and 
insatiable enemy, do you think it would be wise, by your verdict 
of guilty, to say, on the single testimony of a common informer, 
that you do beheve upon your oaths that there is a body con- 
sisting of no less a number than 111,000 men ready to assist 
the French, if they should make an attempt upon this country, 
and ready to fly to their standard whenever they think proper 
to invade it ? This is another point of view in which to ex- 
amine this case. You know the distress and convulsion of the 
public mind for a considerable length of time ; cautiously will 
I abstain from making observations that could refresh the pub- 
lic memory, situated as I am, in a court of justice. But, gen- 



536 SELECT SPEECHES OF JOHN PHILPOT CUERAN. 

tlemen, tliis is the first, the only trial for high treason, in which 
an informer gives his notions of the propriety or impropriety 
of public measures ; I remember none — except the trial of that 
unfortunate wanderer, that unhappy fugitive, for so I may call 
him, Jackson, a native of this country ; guilty he was, but 
neither his guilt nor innocence had any affinity with any other 
system. But this is the first trial that has been brought for- 
ward for high treason, except that, where such matters have 
been disclosed ; and, gentlemen, are you prepared to think well 
of the burden of embarking your character, high and respect- 
able, on the evidence of an abandoned, and I will show you, 
a perjured and common informer, in declaring you are ready 
to offer up to death 111,000 men, one by one, by the sentence 
of a court of. justice? Are you ready to meet it? Do not 
suppose I am base or mean enough to say anything to intimi- 
date you, when I talk to you of such an event ; but if you were 
prepared for such a scene, what would be your private reflec- 
tions were you to do any such thing ? Therefore I put the 
question fauiy to you — have you made up your minds to tell 
the public, that as soon as James O'Brien shall choose to come 
forward again, to make the same charge against 111,000 other 
men, you are ready to see so many men, so many of your fel- 
low-subjects and fellow-citizens, drop one by one into the grave, 
dug for them by his testimony ? 

Do not think I am speaking disrespectfully of you when I 
say, that while an O'Brien may be found, it may be the lot of 
the proudest among you to be in the dock instead of the jury- 
box. If you were standing there, how would you feel if you 
found that the evidence of such a wretch would be admitted 
as sufficient to attaint your Ufe, and send you to an ignominious 
death ? Remember, I do beseech you, that great mandate of 
your rehgion — " Do thou unto all men as you would they should 
do unto you." 

Give me leave to put another point to you — what is the rea- 
son that you deliberate — that you condescend to listen to me 
with such attention ? Why are you so anxious, if, even from 
me, anything should fall tending to enhghten you on the pres- 
ent awful occasion ? it is because, bound by the sacred obhga- 
tions of an oath, your heart will not allow you to forfeit it. 



TEIAL OF PATKICK PINNEY. 537 

Have you any doubt tliat it is tlie object of O'Brien to take 
down the prisoner for the reward that follows ? Have you not 
seen with what more than instinctive keenness this blood- 
hound has pursued his victim ? how he has kept him in view 
from place to place, until he hunts him through the avenues 
of the court to where the unhappy man stands now, hopeless 
of all succor but that which your verdict shall afford ? I have 
heard of assassination by sword, by pistol, and by dagger ; but 
here is a wretch who would dip the Evangelists in blood; if 
he thinks he has not sworn his victim to death, he is ready to 
swear, without mercy and without end ; but oh ! do not, I 
conjure you, suffer him to take an oath ; the hand of the mur- 
derer should not pollute the purity of the Gospel ; if he will 
swear, let it be on the knife, the proper symbol of his profes- 
sion ! 

Gentlemen, I am again reminded of that tissue of abomina- 
ble slander and calumny with which O'Brien has endeavored 
to load so great a portion of the adult part of your country. Is it 
possible you can believe the report of that wretch, that no less 
than 111,000 men are ready to destroy and overtm-n the gov- 
ernment ? I do not believe the abominable slander. I may 
have been too quick in condemning this man ; and I know the 
argument which will be used, and to a certain degree, it is not 
without sense — that you cannot always expect witnesses of 
the most unblemished character, and such things would never 
be brought to light if witnesses hke O'Brien were rejected 
altogether. The argument is of some force ; but does it hold 
here ? or are you to believe it as a truth, because the fact is 
sworn to by an abominable and perjured witness ? No ; the 
law of England, the so-often-mentioned principle upon which 
that important statute is framed, denies the admission. An 
EngHsh judge would be bound to teU you, and the learned 
judges present will tell you, that a single accomplice is not to 
be beheved without strong corroborative confirmation — I do 
not know where a contrary principle was entertained : if such 
has been the case, I never heard of it. O'Brien stated himseK 
to have been involved in the guilt of the prisoner, in taking the 
o bligation v>^hich was forced on him, and which he was after 
wards obliged to wash down; but may not- the whole descrip- 



538 SELECT SPEECHES OF JOHN PHILPOT CUEKAN. 

tion given by liim be false ? May lie not have fabricated tliat , 
story, and come forward as an informer in a transaction tliat 
never happened, from the expectation of pay and profit? 
How does he stand ? He stands divested of a single witness 
to support his character or the truth of his assertions, when 
numbers were necessary for each. You would be most help- 
less and unfortunate men, if everything said by the witness laid 
you under a necessity of believing it. Therefore he must be 
supported either by collateral or confirmatory evidence. Has 
he been sujDported by any collateral evidence, confirming what 
was sworn this day ? No. Two witnesses have been exam- 
ined ; they are not additional witnesses to the overt acts, but 
if either of them should carry any conviction to your minds, 
you must be satisfied that the evidence given by O'Brien is 
false. I will not pollute the respectable and honorable char- 
acter of Lord Portarhngton, by mentioning it with the false 
and perjured O'Brien. Does his lordship teU you a single 
word but wdiat O'Brien said to him ? Because, if his lordshij) 
told all here that O'Brien told him, O'Brien has done the same 
too ; and though he has told Lord Portarhngton every word 
which he has sworn on the table, yet still the evidence given 
by his lordship cannot be corroborative, because the proba- 
bility is that he told a falsehood ; you must take that evi- 
dence by comparison. And what did he tell Lord Portarhng- 
ton? or, rather, what has Lord Portarhngton told you? That 
O'Brien did state to him the project of robbing the ordnance 
some time before he could possibly have known it himself. 
And it is material that he swore on the table, that he did not 
know of the plot till his thhd meeting with the societies ; and 
Lord Portarhngton swears that he told it to him on the first 
interview with him ; there the contradiction of O'Brien by Lord 
Portarhngton is material ; and the testimony of Lord Portar- 
hngton may be put out of the case, except so far as it contra- 
dicts that of O'Brien. 

Mr. Justice Chambeelain. — It is material, Mr. Curran, that 
Lord Portarhngton did not swear positively it was at the first 
interview, but that he was inchned to believe it was so. 

Mr. Cueean. — ^Your lordship will recollect that he said 
O'Brien did not say anything of consequence at any of the 



TEIAL OF PATEICK FINNEY. 539 

^tlier interviews ; but I put liis lordship out of tlie question, so 
far as he does not contradict O'Brien, and he does so. If I 
am stating anything through mistake, I would wish to be set 
right ; but Lord Portarlington said he did not recollect any- 
thing of importance at anj subsequent meeting ; and as far as 
he goes, he does, beyond contradiction, establish the false 
swearing of O'Brien. I am strictly right in stating the con- 
tradiction ; so far as it can be compared with the testimony of 
O'Brien, it does weaken it ; and, therefore, I wiU. leave it there, 
and put Lord Portarlington out of the question — that is, as if 
he had not been examined at all, but where he differs from the 
evidence given by O'Brien. 

As to the witness Clarke, after all he has sworn, you can- 
not but be satisfied he has not said a single word materially 
against the prisoner ; he has not given any confirmatory evi- 
dence in support of any one overt act laid in the indictment. 
You have them upon your minds — he has not said one word 
as to the various meetings — levying money, or sending per- 
sons to France ; and, therefore, I do warn you against giving 
it that attention for which it has been introduced. He does 
not make a second witness. Gentlemen, in alluding to the 
evidence of Lord Portarlington, which I have already men- 
tioned, I was bound to make some observations. On the ev- 
idence of Clarke I am also obliged to do the same, because he 
has endeavored to prejudice your minds, by an endeavor to 
give a sliding evidence of what does not by any means come 
within this case ; that is, a malignant endeavor to impute a 
horrid transaction — the murder of a man of the name of 
Thompson — to the prisoner at the bar ; but I do conjure you 
to consider what motives there can be for insinuations of tliis 
sort, and why such a transaction, so remote from the case be- 
fore you, should be endeavored to be impressed on your 
minds. 

Gentlemen, I am not blinking the question ; I come boldly 
up to it ; and I ask you, in the presence of the court and of 
your God, is there one word of evidence that bears the shadow 
of such a charge, as the murder of that unfortunate man, to 
the prisoner at the bar? Is there one w^ord to show how he 
died — whether by force, or by any other means ? Is there a 



54:0 SELECT SPEECHES OF JOHN PHELPOT CUEKAN. 

word how lie came to his end ? Is there a word to bring a 
shadow of suspicion that can be attached to the prisoner?^ 
Gentlemen, my client has been deprived of the benefit of a 
witness, May, (you have heard of it,) who, had the trial been 
postponed, might have been able to attend ; we have not been 
able to examine him, but you may guess what he would have 
said — he would have discredited the informer O'Brien. 

The evidence of O'Brien ought to be supported by collateral 
circumstances. It is not ; and though Eoberts is not here, 
yet you may conjecture what he would have said. But, gen- 
tlemen, I have examined five witnesses, and it does seem as if 
there had been some providential interference carried on in 
bringing five witnesses to contradict O'Brien in his testimony, 
as to direct matters of fact, if his testimony could be put in 
competition with direct positive evidence. O'Brien said, he 
Imew nothing of ordering back any money to Margaret Moore ; 
he denied that fact. The woman was examined — what did 
she say on the table in the presence of O'Brien? That " an 
order was made, and the money refunded, after the magistrate 
had abused him for his conduct." What would you think of 
your servant, if you found him committing such perjury — 
would you believe him? What do you think of this fact? 
O'Brien denies he knew anything of the money being re- 
funded ! What does Mrs. Moore say ? That after the magis- 
trate had abused him for his conduct, the money was refunded, 
and that " she and O'Brien walked down stairs together ! ". Is 
this an accidental trip, a httle stumble of conscience, or, is it not 
downright, Avillful perjury ? What said Mr. Clarke ? I laid 
the foundation of the evidence by asking O'Brien, did you ever 
pass for a revenue officer ? I call, gentlemen, on your know- 
ledge of the human character, and of human life, what was the 
conduct of the man ? Was it what you would have acted, if 
you had been called on in a court of justice ? Did he answer 
me candidly? Do you remember his manner? "Not, sir, 
that I remember ; it could not be when I was sober." " Did 
you do it at all ? " What was the answer—" I might, sir, 
have done it ; but I must have been drunk. I never did any- 
thing dishonest." Why did he answer thus? Because he did 
imagine he would have been opposed in his testimony, he not 



TRIAL OF PATEICK FINNEY. o41 

only added perjury to his prevarication, but he added robbery 
to both. 

There are thousands of your fellow subjects waiting to know, 
if the fact charged upon the nation of one hundred and eleven 
thousand men ready to assist the common enemy be true ; if 
upon the evidence of an abandoned wretch, a common cheat, 
a robber, and a perjurer, you will convict the prisoner at the 
bar. As to his being a coiner, I will not pass that felony in 
payment among his other crimes, but I will offer it by itself ; 
I will offer it as an emblem of his conscience, coj^per-washed 
— I will offer it by itself. 

"What has O'Brien said ? "I never remember that I did 
pretend to be a revenue officer ; but I remember there was a 
man said something about whiskey ; and I remember I threat- 
ened to complain, and he was a httle frightened — and he gave 
me three and three-pence ! " I asked him, " Did his "wife give 
you anything? " " There was three and three-pence betvveen 
them." "Who gave jou the money?" "It was all I got 
from both of them !" Gentlemen, would you let him into your 
house as a servant ? Suppose one of you wanted a servant, 
and went to the other to get one ; and suppose that you heard 
that he personated a revenue officer ; that he had threatened 
to become an informer against persons not having licenses, 
in order to extort money to compromise the actions, would you 
take him as a servant ? If jou would not take him as a ser- 
vant in exchange for his wages, Avould you take his perjuries 
in exchange for the hfe of a fellow-subject? Let me ask you, 
how would you show your faces to the public, and justify a 
barter of that kind, if you were to estabhsh and send abroad 
his assignats of j^erjury to pass current as the price of human 
blood? How could you bear the tyranny your consciences 
would exercise over you ; the dagger that would turn upon 
your heart's blood, if in the moment of madness you could 
suffer by your verdict the sword of justice to fall, on the head 
of a victim committed to 3-our sv/orn humanity, to be mas- 
sacred in your presence by the perjured and abominable evi- 
dence that has been offered ! But does it stop there ? Has 
perjury rested there? — No. What said the honest-looking, 
unlettered mind of the poor farmer ? What said Cavanagh ? 



542 SELECT SPEECHES OF JOHN PHILPOT CUEEAN. 

" I keep a public-liouse. O'Brien came to me, and pretended, 
he was a revenue officer ; — I knew not but it might be so ; — 
lie told me he was so — he examined the httle beer I had, and 
my cask of porter." And, gentlemen, what did the villain do ? 
While he was dipping his abandoned tongue in perjury and in 
blood, he robbed the wretched man of two guineas. Where 
is he nov/ ? Do you wonder hs is afraid of my eye ? that he 
has buried himseK in the crowd ? that he has shrunk into the 
whole of the multitude, when the witness endeavored to dis- 
entangle him and his evidence ? Do you not feel that he was 
appalled with horror by that more piercing and penetrating 
eye that looks upon him, and upon me, and upon us all ? The 
chords of his heart bore testimony by its flight, and proved 
that he fled for the same. But does it rest there ? No. Wit- 
ness upon witness appeared for the prisoner, to whom, I dare 
say, you will give that credit you must deny to O'Brien. In 
the presence of God they swore, that they " w^ould not believe 
him upon his oath, in the smallest matter." Do you know 
him, gentlemen of the jury ? Are you acquainted with James 
O'Brien ? If you do, let him come forward from that ci'owd 
where he has hid himself, and claim you by a look. Have 
you been fellow-companions ? If you have, I dare say you will 
recognize him. Have I done with him yet? No ; while there 
is a thread of his villainy together, I will tatter it, lest you 
should be caught with it. Did he dare to say to the sohcitor 
for the Crown, to the counsel that are prosecuting the prisoner, 
that " there is some one witness on the surface of the globe 
that will say, he beheves I am not a villain ; but I am a man 
that deserves some credit on my oath in a court of justice?" 
Did he venture to call one human being to that fact ? But 
why did they not venture to examine the prisoner's witnesses 
as to the reasons of 'their disbelief? What, if I was bold 
enough to say to any of you, gentlemen, that I did not think 
you deserved credit on your oath, would not the first question 
you would ask be the reason for that opinion ? Did he ven- 
ture to ask that question ? No. I think the trial has been 
fahly and humanely carried on, Mrs. Moore was examined ; 
she underwent cross-examination — the object was to impeach 
her credit. I offered to examine to her character ; no — I 



TEIAL OF PATKICK PINNEY. 543 

would not be suffered to do it ; tliey were riglit in the point 
of law. Gentlemen, let me aslc you another question : — Is the 
character of O'Brien such, that you think he did not know 
that any human creature was to attack it ? Did you not see 
him coiling himself in the scaly circles of his perjury, making- 
anticipated battle against the attack, that he knew would be 
made, and spitting his venom against the man that might have 
given such evidence of his infamous character, if he had dared 
to appear. 

Gentlemen, do you feel now that I was maliciously aspersing 
the character of O'Brien ? What language is strong enough 
to describe the mixture of swindling and imposition which, in 
the face of justice, this wretch has been guilty of ? Taking on 
himself the situation of one of the King's officers, to rob the 
King's subjects of the King's money ; but that is not enough 
for him — in the vileness and turpitude of his character he af- 
terwards wants to rob them of their lives by perjury. Do I 
speak truly to you, gentlemen, when I have shown you the wit- 
ness in his real colors — when I have shown you his habitual 
fellowship with baseness and fraud? He gave a recipe for 
forging money. " Why did you give it to him ?" " He was 
an inquisitive man, and I gave it as a matter of course." 
" But why did you do it ?" " It was a light, easy way of get- 
ting money — I gave it as a humbug." He gave a recipe for 
forging the coin of the country, because it was a light, easy 
way of getting money ! Has it, gentlemen, ever happened to 
you in the ordinary passages of life, to have met with such a 
constellation of atrocities and horrors, and that in a single 
man ? What do you say to Clarke ? Except his perjury, he 
has scarcely ground to turn on. What was his cross-examina- 
tion ? " Pray, sir, were you in court yesterday ?" " No, sir, I 
was not." "Why?" "Mr. Kemmis sent me word not to 
come." There happened to be sevei'al persons who saw him 
in court ; one of them swore it — the rest were ready. Call up 
" little Skirmish " again.* " Pray, Skirmish, why did you say 
you were not in court yesterday, when you were ?" " Why, it 
was a little bit of a mistake, not being a lawyer. It being a 

* "Little Skirmisli," a character in tlie Deserter. 



544 SELECT SPEECHES OP JOHN PHILPOT CUERAN. 

matter of law, I was mistaken." " How did it happen you ■ 
were mistaken ?" " I was puzzled by the hard questious that 
Mr. M'Nally asked me." What was the hard question he was 
asked? "Were you in court yesterday?" "No; Mr. Kem- 
mis sent me word I need not come." Can you, gentlemen of 
the jury, suppose that any simple, well-meaning man would 
commit such a gross and abominable perjury ? I do not think 
he is a credible man ; that is, that he swore truer than Lord 
Portarlington did, because his lordship stands on a single tes- 
timony ; he may be true, because he has sworn on both sides ; 
he has sworn positively he was not in the court yesterday ; 
and he has sworn positively he was ! — so that, wherever the 
truth is, he is found in it ; let the ground be clean or dirty, he 
is in the midst of it. There is no person but deserves some 
little degree of credit ; if the soul was as black as night, it 
would burn to something in hell. But let me not appear to 
avoid the question by any seeming levity upon it. O'Brien 
stands blackened by the unimpeached proofs of five positive 
perjuries. If he was indicted on any one of them, he could 
not appear to give evidence in a court of justice ; and I do call 
upon you, gentlemen of the jury, to refuse him on his oath that 
credit which never ought to be squandered on the evidence of 
an abandoned and self-convicted perjurer. 

The charge is not merely against the prisoner at the bar ; it 
takes in the entire character of your country. It is the first 
question of the kind for ages brought forward in this nation to 
public Adew, after an expiration of years. It is the great ex- 
periment of the informers of Ireland, to see with what success 
they may make this traffic of human blood. Fifteen men are 
now in jail, depending on the fate of the unfortunate prisoner, 
a,nd on the same blasted and perjured evidence of O'Brien. I 
have stated at large the case, and the situation of my client : 
I make no apology for wasting your time ; I regret I have not 
been more able to do my duty ; it would insult you if I were to 
express any such feeling to you. I have only to apologize to 
my client for delaying his acquittal. I have blackened the 
character of O'Brien in every point of view ; and, though he 
anticipated the attack that would be made on it, yet he could 



TRIAL OF PATRICK FI^fNEY. 545 

not procure one human being even base enough to depose that 
he was to be beheved on his oath. 

The character of the prisoner has been given. Am I war- 
ranted in saying, that I am now defending an innocent and 
unfortunate fellow subject, on the grounds of eternal justice 
and immutable law ? and by that eternal law I do call upon 
you to acquit my chent. I call upon you for your justice ; 
Great is the reward, and sweet is the recollection in the hour 
of trial, and in the day of dissolution, when, the casualties of 
hfe are pressing close upon your heart, and when in the ag- 
onies of death, you look back to the justifiable and honorable 
transactions of your hfe. At the awful foot of eternal justice I 
do, therefore, invite you to acquit my client ; and may God, of 
his infinite mercy, grant you that great compensation which is 
a reward more lasting than that perishable crown we read of, 
which the ancients gave to him who saved the hfe of a fellow 
citizen in battle. In the name of pubhc justice ! I do implore 
you to interpose between the perjurer and his intended victim ! 
and, if ever you are assailed by the villainy of an informer, may 
you find refuge in the recollection of that example, which, 
when jurors, you set to those that might be called to pass 
judgment upon your lives ; to repel at the human tribunal the 
intended effects of hireling perjury, and premeditated murder I 
If it should be the fate of any of you to count the tedious mo- 
ments of captivity, in sorrow and in pain, pining in the damps 
and gloom of a dungeon, recollect there is another more awful 
tribunal than any on earth, which we must all approach, and 
before which the best of us wiU have occasion to look back to 
what httle good he has done on this side the grave ; I do pray, 
that Eternal Justice may record the deed you have done, and 
give to you the full benefit of your claims to an eternal re- 
ward, a requital in mercy upon your souls ! 




HENRY GR ATT AN 



i 



SELECT SPEECHES OF 

HON. HENRY GRATTAN. 



MEMOIR OF HON. HENRY GRATTAN. 



In the eighteenth century, Grattan stands forth as the exalted 
patriot, the upright statesman, the foremost orator in the Irish 
senate or at the Irish bar. His name continues to enjoy the rev- 
erence with which his contemporaries environed it, and Time has 
left his laurels undimmed, his memory still fresh. 

Born in DubHn in 1750, he was carefully ti'ained for his future 
career in life by his father, himself a barrister, and for years fill- 
ing the judical position of Recorder, as well as representing his 
native city in the parliament which Ii*eland possessed at that day. 

Young Grattan entered Trinity College in 1763, and after grad- 
uating, four years later, proceeded to the Middle Temple, Lon- 
don, to pursue the course of legal study which was to fit him to 
succeed his father. But his mind was too great to be content with 
mediocrity. He hung in rapt admiration on the eloquent periods 
of the great Lord Chatham, and resolved to be an orator, devoting 
his study to excel in eloquence. 

He was admitted to the Irish bar in 1772, and three years later 
entered the parliament of Ireland as member for Charlemont. He 
at once, renouncing all hopes of government patronage, joined 
Flood and the leading patriots in their efforts to benefit Ireland. 
Free trade was one thing they claimed, and which England re- 
fused. In April, 1780, he introduced his famous Declaration of 
Rights, and by his eloquent advocacy of the best interests of his 
native land became the idol of the Irish people. When govern- 
ment appealed to the volunteers, Grattan fired the national spirit, 
and through his influence the number rose to eighty thousand. 

He was the master spirit of the convention at Dungannon, and 
drew the famous resolution, that " a claim of any body of men 
other than the King, Lords and Commons of Ireland to make laws 
to bind this kingdom, is unconstitutional, illegal and a grievance." 

England yielded then, to plot in treachery the Act of Union. 



550 MEMOIR OF HON. HENRY GRATTAN. 

For a time Grattan lost some of his power for good by his quar- 
rel with Flood, and after representing Dublin in 1790, retired tem- 
poraily from parliament, but when the infamous Union was pro- 
posed, re-entered it as member for Wicklow. 

When that iniquitous suppression of Irish legislation was ac- 
comphshed, he entered the Imperial parhament, representing Mal- 
ton in 1805 and Dublin in 1806 ; but the voice of an Irish mem- 
ber was lost in halls where Irish interests and Irish welfare were 
but scoffed at. 

His impassioned eloquence, his learning, his patriotic fervor, 
were almost unheeded, but he labored to the last with unswerving 
fidelity to the great principles of his life, and died in London, May 
14th, 1820. 



SPEECHES OF HON. HEMY GRATTAN 



SPEECH IN THE lEISH HOUSE OF COMMONS, ON 
MR. FORBES' BILL TO LIMIT PENSIONS. 



[In 1785, the pension list amounted to i£95,000, which exceeded 
the whole amount of the civil establishment. From 1757 to 1785, 
every establishment, civil and military, greatly increased — the pa- 
tronage of the Crown was extended, and the national debt amount- 
ed to more than two milUons. — The pension list of Ireland exceed- 
ed that of England. — The commerce — the revenue, and the resources 
of the former, bore no competition with those of the latter. — " It 
was idle, therefore," said Mr. Forbes, " to talk of the independence 
of the Irish parliament, whose members received wages from the 
Crown." On this debate, Mr. Grattan made the memorable decla- 
ration, which seemed to have given such pain to the delicate feel- 
ings of ministers : — " Should I affirm," said Mr. Grattan, " that 
the pension list is not a grievance, I should affirm, in the face of 
my country, an impudent, insolent, and a public lie !"] 

Mr. Grattan rose, and spoke as follows : 

Sir, the gentlemen who have urged the most plausible argu- 
ment against the bill, have not taken the trouble to read it. 
They say, that it gives up the control of parliament over such 
pensions as shall not exceed the limits of the bill. No such 
thing — ^your control cannot be given up without express words ; 
but here there are express words to save it : here, aware of 
such a pretence, and that no color should be given for such an 
objection, the preamble states the nature of the pensions which 
are to have any existence at all, " such as are allowed by parlia- 
ment." This objection being answered by the bill, I must ad- 
vert to another, which has nothing to say to the bill. 



552 SELECT SPEECHES OF HENRY GRATTAN. 

A right honorable member has declared the bill to be the 
most exceptionable that ever came into parliament ; and his 
reason for this most extraordinary declaration is most singular 
indeed, " because it restrains the ministers of the Crown, and 
leaves the pension list open to both houses of parliament." 
From thence he infers that a practice of profusion will ensue, 
and from hence you would infer that the pension list was not 
now open to the addresses of both or either of the houses of 
parhament ; but the fact is, that the evil he deprecates, now 
exists : that the bill does not give, but finds and leaves a pow- 
er to both houses of parliament to address on such subjects. 
As the matter now stands, both or either of the houses of 
parliament may address for such charges, and the minister may 
also impose such charges with such addresses. You are thus 
exposed to the two causes of expense, the power of address in 
us, and the unlimited power of pensioning without address in 
the minister ; and the right honorable thinks you will increase 
profusion by removing one of its causes ; — the principal cause 
— the notorious cause — the unlimited power of the minister, 
the most constant, operative and plentiful source of prodigal- 
ity. In the same argument he adds, that the power of par- 
liament, in disposing of the public money, ruined this country, 
when there was a redundancy in the treasury, by serving the 
purposes of jobbing aristocracy. According to him, then, the 
greatest evils which can befall this country are a surplus in the 
treasury, and a restraint on the prodigaHty of the minister. 

A prosperity which produces redundancy, and a constitu- 
tional bill which restrains the unlimited grants of the Crown, 
is his recipe for the ruin of Ireland. In the course of this 
argument my right honorable friend has spoken of economy. 
Sir, a friend of mine the other night moved a resolution on the 
principle of economy, " that your expense should not exceed 
your income ;" his motion was founded on an obvious maxim, 
that in ordinary years a government should be restrained by 
its own estimate of expense and revenue ; his motion was 
rejected on two idle arguments : — That unforeseen emergencies 
might arise, was one argument; but neither the complexion 
nor situation of the times warranted the apprehension of dan- 
ger, and therefore the argument, if it had no corruption in 



BILL TO LIMIT PENSIONS. 553 

coutemplation, was fictitious and idle. The other argument 
against my friend's motion was, that the maxims of economy- 
were adopted aheadj by the present administration. — On 
what foundation, fact, or authority, such an argument was ad- 
vanced, the catalogue of pensions can best determine. Those 
pensions are not words, but facts. I always conceived that 
the public treasure was, like the people's liberty, to be guard- 
ed rather by law than confidence ; and I thought the new 
taxes a good opportunity for establishing such a safeguard. I 
thought that such a confidence, without such a safeguard, 
would encourage administration at last into acts of profusion ; 
but I could not think the act of profusion would accompany 
the professions of economy and the grants of the people. I 
could not foresee that peculation would attend the birth of the 
tax. I will consider this peculation, or the new catalogue of 
pensions, and then the bill — first the grievance, then the 
remedy. 

See how this grievance will naturally affect the people : 
they will, perhaps, be inclined to think that they see in such a 
measure the old school revived — ^the old spirit of plunder 
renewed, when government in Ireland was nothing but the 
division of spoil. They will remember that they have given 
new taxes, and that they have not received the commerce 
which was, I say, promised, or the economy which was pro- 
fessed ; in short, they wiU see that you have gotten their mo- 
ney, and have given them, as compensation, a new Hst of pen- 
sions. 

See how this grievance may affect the British govern- 
ment : when the British minister sees that he has incurred the 
odium of the new taxes, and of their misapplication, he will 
naturally expect that his influence, at least, is augmented ; but 
when he finds that he has added nothing to his power, he will 
lament this attack on his credit. The British government will 
recollect, that to remove the causes of discontent and jealousy 
in Ireland, Great Britain surrendered her assumed suprema- 
cy. Perhaps that government will not think itself well used in 
the present attempt to revive Irish jealousy, by the unneces- 
sary peculation of their servants in Ireland. 

See again how this grievance affects the Irish ministry. 



554 SELECT SPEECHES OF HENRY GRATTAN. 

"Why give Ireland a grievance, for no object on earth, but to 
lessen the credit of the Irish government ? Gentlemen speak 
of reflection — that catalogue is the reflection. You cannot 
conceal, nor justify, nor extenuate : your connivance would, be 
aggravation. The name of his Excellency has been introduced 
to sway debate ; his friends come in too late to serve him on 
this subject ; they should have dissuaded him from giving the 
offence ; they should have told his Excellency, that his list of 
pensioners would be prejudicial to his fame, and was unneces- 
sary to his support ; that the profit went to others, and the 
scandal to the government. 

While I protest against this measure, as a most disinterest- 
ed act of profusion on the part of government, and therefore 
as an act of the most superlative folly, yet will I say more of 
his grace, the Duke of Rutland ; more than his own servants 
have said of him ; they have said of him on this subject, what 
is ever said, that he is a lord heutenant in the right ; I say he 
is an honest man in the wrong, which is better. 

Having stated the grievance, as far as affects the three inter- 
ests concerned, I shall consider the defence ; and first, it is ad- 
vanced, that the pension hst of Ireland is comparatively small 
— small, if you compare it to the royal establishments of Eng- 
land, or other countries. 

I directly controvert that position ; it is comparatively great ; 
for it is this moment equal to the pension hst of Great Britain ; 
compare it to your hereditary revenue, and it is above one 
thh'd of the net produce of that revenue ; and in the course of 
thirty years it has increased more than double. Another ar- 
gument advanced in its defence tells you, that the new pension 
list or the last catalogue is small ; sir, it is greater than the 
produce of your new tax on hawkers and peddlers. Why con- 
tinue that tax ? Because government could not spare it. Why 
waste that tax ? When I see the state repose itself on beg- 
gars, I pity and submit. But when I see the state give away 
its taxes thus eviscerated from the poor ; when I see govern- 
ment come to the poor man's hovel for a part of his loaf to 
scatter it ; when I see government tax the peddler to pamper 
the pensioner, I blush for the extortion of the state, and repro- 
bate an offence, that may be well called prodigality of rapine. 



BILL TO LmiT PENSIONS. 555 

Sir, when gentlemen say, that the new charge for pensions is 
small, let me assure them they need not be alarmed ; the charge 
will be much greater; for, unless your interposition should 
deter, what else is there to check it ? — will public poverty ? 
No. New taxes? No. — Gratitude for those taxes? No. — 
Principle? No. — Profession? No. — The love of fame, or sense 
of infamy ? No. — Confined to no one description of merit, or 
want of character, under the authority of that list, every man, 
woman, and child in Ireland, have pretensions to become a 
public incumbrance ; so that since government went so far, I 
marvel that they have stopped, unless the pen fell out of their 
hand from fatigue, for it could not be from principle. 

No, sir, this hst will go on ; it will go on till the merchant 
shall feel it ; until the manufacturer shall feel it ; until the 
pension hst shall take into its own hand the keys of taxation ; 
and instead of taxing hcense to sell, shall tax the article and 
manufacture itself ; until we shall lose our great commercial 
resource, a comparative exemption from taxes, the gift of our 
poverty, and get an accumulation of taxes to be the com- 
panion of our poverty ; until public indignation shall cry shame 
upon us, and the morality of a serious and offended community 
shall caU out for the interposition of law. 

As a further defence of this grievance, it is said that the 
House of Commons have, from time to time, addressed for 
pensions, and contributed to the incumbrance. If those ad- 
dresses were improper, government was guilty of covin, in not 
opposing the addresses in parhament ; and the argument then 
proposes an emulation of reciprocal expense, and the exhorta- 
tion to mutual rapine. If, on the other hand, these addresses 
were proper, the argument amounts to this — that there are 
many necessary charges on the pension list, therefore there 
should be more that are unnecessary; and the greater the 
public charge on. the revenues, the greater should be the mis- 
application. In the same spirit gentlemen have relied on 
bounties, and the scrambling committee. The fact, however, 
is, that the corn bounty is greatly diminished, and the scram- 
bHng committee is extinct ; but suppose the fact to be other- 
wise, what is the argument, but a proposal to parliament to 



556 SELECT SPEECHES OF HENEY GRATTAN. 

have the nation a victim to jobs on the one hand, and to pen- 
sions on the other. 

In defence of this incumbrance it is further advanced, that 
old quahty should be supported. — Admitted. I have no per- 
sonal dislike to any individual of the new catalogue. 

I have for some great respect and love. The first name did 
honor to the chair, and is an honor to the parhament that 
provides for him. As to old quality, why not bring back the 
great Irish offices now in the hands of absentees, and give old 
quahty great places instead of httle pensions ! Again, why the 
one under that description considered so late, and the other so 
httle ? But is the merit of four or five of this catalogue the 
qualification of nineteen ; unless quahfication, like the plague, 
is caught by contagion. 

Sh', in so very numerous a list, it is almost impossible that 
some meritorious persons should not have been obtruded ; and 
yet in so numerous a Hst, it is astonishing there should be so 
few of that description. One pension of that description I 
well remember ; it suggests to me other considerations than 
those which such a Hst would naturally inspire — I mean the 
pension to the family of the late chief baron. I moved for 
that pension : I did it from a natural and instinctive feehng ; 
I came to this House from his hearse. "What concern first 
suggested, reason afterwards confirmed. Do I lament that 
pension ? Yes ; — because in it I lament the mortality of no- 
ble emulation — of delightful various endowments — and above 
all, because I feel the absence of him who, if now here, would 
have inspired this debate, would have asserted your privileges, 
exposed the false pretences of prerogative, and have added 
one angelic voice to the councils of the nation. 

Having considered the pension list as a grievance, I shall 
now trouble you with some observations on the remedy, namely, 
the bill which my friend proposes on the spur of the present 
expense, grounding himself on the example of England. In 
opposition to this bill, some gentlemen of this House have come 
forth in the rusty armor of old prerogative, and have stated 
this attempt to reform abuses by bill, as an invasion of the sa- 
cred rights of the Crown. Sir, I apprehend that parliament 
may, and ought to remedy abuses, even though they are not in 



BILL TO LIMIT PENSIONS. 557 

tliemselves illegal. On this principle it was that the judges' bill 
was passed ; on this principle the habeas corpus bill in Ireland 
was passed ; and on this principle many of the best laws in 
England have passed. Abuses which obtain under color of law, 
a.re best rectified in parliament. 

When the Commons of England had returned to their House, 
from a decisive answer given by Charles I. to the petition of 
right, they began to consider the state of the nation in all the 
various management of the King s prerogative ; a message was 
dehvered through the speaker, from the King, to admonish 
them not to cast reflections on Ms government, or to enter into 
the affau's of the state. iSii Edward Coke observed, on that 
message : " It is the business of this House to moderate the 
King's prerogative. Nothing which reacheth to abuse, that 
may not be treated of here." This principle is particularly 
appHcable to cases of money, over which you, by special pri- 
vilege, preside ; and still more appKcable to cases of your own 
revenues, because they are appropriated. A right honorable 
member txis contradicted this ; he says, that however the new 
customs and excise may be appropriated, yet that the old cus- 
toms are under no appropriation whatsoever ; and he says fur- 
ther, that formerly the King had a right to them by common 
law ; and he states that they amount to =£200,000 per annum ; 
but the right honorable member is not warranted, either by the 
laws or constitution of his country, in the doctrine which he 
has ventured to advance. Charles I. thought, indeed, like the 
right honorable member, that the King was entitled to tonnage 
and poundage by common law ; but the parliament of England 
differed from both, and resolved such levies to be illegal, and 
the persons who, thinking hke the member, had been concerned 
therein, to be dehnquents. Nay, the old customs to the King 
makes an exception ; and the quaHfication of a grant in any 
degree, usually bespeaks the poverty of the grantor ; the mem- 
ber therefore seems not to have adverted sufficiently either to 
the statute law or the constitution of his country. 

The statute of Charles II. which grants the new customs, 
and which also the member does not appear entirely to under- 
stand, seems to consohdate the new and old customs, and ap- 
propriate both to one and the same purpose. After reciting 



558 SELECT SPEECHES OP HENBY GKATTAN 

the old grant, and establishing a common book of rates, it 
says, — "And for the better guarding and defending of the seas," 
— and then it proceeds to grant the new customs : the words 
" better guarding and defending of the seas," bespeak the ap- 
propriation both to one and the same purpose, and is a term 
of connection between the old and new customs, making them 
a common fund for the defence of the seas. 

But I might yield all this — I might allow that the hereditary 
revenue is not appropriated — that the act of customs does not 
mean the guarding the seas, nor the act of excise the pay of 
the army. Yet is the hereditary revenue the estate of the na- 
tion, of which the first magistrate is but a trustee for pubhc 
purposes. It is not the private property of the King, but the 
public revenue, and any diversion thereof is a crime. The 
great Duke of Buckingham was impeached for such a crime ; 
one article of his impeachment was the grant of several pen- 
sions to himself and his friends out of the revenue, and one 
criminal pension in the schedule, was a charge on the old cus- 
toms of Ireland. At an earlier period the Duke of Suffolk 
was impeached, and one charge was the grant of pensions to 
himself and his friends. At an earlier period, in the reign of 
Richard II., an Earl of Oxford was impeached for grants to 
himself and his friends ; the crime is called interception of 
subsidy ; whereby the Realm was left undefended, and grants 
like yours for the defence thereof, wasted on individuals, while 
the people were doubly taxed, as you are, to make up the wan- 
ton deficiency. 

Thus does it appear, that in cases concerning pensions by 
prerogative, the Commons have interfered ; though prerogative 
in those cases might plead that the revenues out of which these 
grants arose, were wholly appropriated ; but a public grant ap- 
propriates itself to the public use ; and the parhament that 
proceeds either to punish or control the diversion thereof, does 
not invade the prerogative of the Crown, but exercises the pri- 
vilege of the Commons, in guarding the inheritance of the na- 
tion. In reforming such abuses, you may proceed in your in- 
quisitorial capacity, as the greatest inquest of the nation, by 
impeachment, or in your legislative capacity', by bill ; the lat- 
ter is the milder method — my friend adopts it ; and proceeds 



BILL TO LIMIT PENSIONS. 559 

ratlier to reform than to punish. You tell him that we have 
submitted to tliis grievance for a long time. It is true ; but a 
course of toleration and impunity neither constitutes inno- 
cence, nor draws out the sting of a grievance ; it is true, you 
have submitted to this grievance for a long time. Hence the 
many erroneous arguments of this night. The pubHc inherit- 
ance has been so diverted to private purposes, by a series of 
ministers, that we have forgotten the proprietor in the misap- 
phcation of the property, and talk of the estate, as of the pri- 
vate patrimony of the King. Hence these prerogatives of ra- 
pine ! these rights of plunder ! the authority of the King to be 
robbed by his own servants of the common stock ! — Hence it 
is, that gentlemen have sot up the shadow of prerogative as a 
sentinel to pubhc robbery. 

When gentlemen call this bill an attack on the prerogative 
of the Crown, they are answered by the principles of the con- 
stitution ; but they are also answered by a precedent of the 
most decisive nature; and that precedent is this very bill, 
which is now the law of England. By the law of England, no 
pensioner for years, or during pleasure, can sit in parhament ; 
and by the law of England the amount of pensions is limited. 
The first law passed at the time of the Eevolution, and was 
improved in the reign of Queen Anne. The latter passed in 
1782, with the entire concurrence of these very persons who 
now constitute this administration ; and yet the argument of 
prerogative would have been stronger in England, because 
there a civil list had been granted to the King, and the subse- 
quent hmitation of pensions on that list, seemed a revocation 
of the powers of the grant. On what authority then, or pre- 
tence, do gentlemen call a measure which they supported as 
necessary for England, an invasion of the rights of the Crown, 
when proposed for the benefit of Ireland? What pretence 
have they for such partial doctrine of unequal measure ? As 
if that was infringement in Ireland, which in England was con- 
stitution ; or, as if what was nioderation in the people of 
England, would be in those of Ireland, arrogance and pre- 
sumption. 

This leads me to another objection, on which gentlemen 
much rehed, that this bill is an innovation — a new constitution ; 



560 SELECT SPEECHES OF HENRY GRATTAN. 

to admit the undue influence of the Crown in parliament, and 
to control the excess of expense — an innovation ! It is an en- 
croachment most certainly, an encroachment on corruption, an 
invasion on the ancient privileges of venality ; it is the old con- 
stitution encroaching and innovating on long establislied dis- 
honest practices and accumulating expenses. All these ex- 
penses and practices, it seems we have akeady sanctified ; we 
voted, the other night, that neither in their excess or applica- 
tion were they a grievance. Sir, I will not presume to censure 
a vote of this House, but I may be permitted to explain that 
vote ; we could not mean, by that vote, that the present pen- 
sion list was no grievance, for there was no man in debate 
hardy enough to make such an assertion ; no man considers 
what that pension list is ; it is the i^rodigahty, jobbing, misap- 
plication, and corruption of every Irish minister since 1772. 
To say that such a list was not, either in its excess or apphca- 
tion, a grievance, was to declare, that since that period (that is, 
above liaK a century,) all your ministers were immaculate, or 
rather, indeed, that God had governed you himself, and had 
never sent you a minister in his anger. 

I declare I could not affirm the innocence of the Hst, because 
I should be guilty of affirming what I conceive to be false. Do 
gentlemen think otherwise ? — Let them take thek catalogue in 
one hand, and place on their heart the other ; let them look 
this nation in the face, and in that posture declare, that the 
present Irish pension list is not, either in its excess or applica- 
tion, a grievance ! They could not do it ; they have voted what 
they would not say. I dissented from their vote, but I went 
along with their conviction. 



SPEECH IN THE DEBATE ON TITHES. 

In THE Irish Parliament, in 1787. 



Sm, in this session we have, on the subject of tumults, made 
some progress, though we have not made much. It has been 
admitted that such a thing does exist amonsj the lower order 



DEBATE ON TITHES. 561 

of people as distress ; we have condemned tlieir violence, we 
have made provisions for its punishment, but we have admit- 
ted also that the peasantry are ground to the earth ; we have 
admitted the fact of distress. 

We have gone further ; we have acknowledged that this dis- 
tress should make part of our parliamentary inquiry — we have 
thought proper, indeed, to postpone the day, but we are 
agreed, notwithstanding, in two things — the existence of a 
present distress, and the necessity of a future remedy. 

A multitude of particulars would be tedious ; but there are 
some features so very strildng and prominent, we cannot avoid 
the sight of them. Our present system of supporting the clergy, 
is Jiable to radical objections : in the south, it goes against the 
first principle of human existence ; in the south, you tithe po- 
tatoes. Would any man believe it ? the peasant pays, I am in- 
formed, often seven pounds an acre for land, gets sixpence a day 
for his labor, and pays from eight to twelve shillings for his 
tithe ! If the whole case was comprised in this fact, this fact 
is sufficient to call for your interference : it attacks cultivation 
in its cradle, and tithes the lowest, the most general, and the 
most compassionate subsistence of human life : the more se- 
verely felt is this, because it is chiefly confined to the south, 
one of the great regions of poverty. In Connaught, potatoes 
do not pay tithe ; in the north, a moderate modus takes place 
when they do pay ; but in the south they do pay a great 
tithe ; and in the south you have perpetual disturbances ! 
That the tithe of potatoes is not the only distress, I am not 
now to be informed. Six or seven pounds an acre for land, 
and sixpence a day for labor, are also causes of misery ; but 
the addition of eight, ten, or twelve shillings tithe, to the two 
other causes, is, and must be, a very great aggravation of that 
misery ; and as you cannot well interfere in regulating the rent 
of land, or price of labor, I do not see that you, therefore, 
should not interfere where you can regulate and relieve ; I do 
not see why you should suffer a most heavy tithe to be added 
to the high price of rent, and the low price of labor ; neither 
am I sensible of the force of that supposition, which conceives 
a diminution of the tithe of potatoes would be only an au^,- 
mentation of the rent : for I do not find that rent is higher in 



562 SELECT SPEECHES OF HENRY GRATTAN. 

counties where potatoes are not tithed ; nor can I see how an 
existing lease can be cancelled, and the rent increased, bj the 
diminishing or taking off the tithe ; neither do I see that simil- 
itude between tithe and rent, which should justify the compar- 
ison; rent is paymeut for land, tithe is payment for capital, 
and labor espendod on land ; the proportion of rent diminishes 
witli the proportion of the produce, that is, of the industry—- 
the proportion of tithe increases with the industry ; rent there- 
fore, even a high rent, may be a compulsion on labor, and tithe 
a penalty. 

The cottager does pay tithe, and the grazier does not ; the 
rich grazier, with a very beneficial lease, and without any sys- 
tem of husbandry, is exempted, and throws the parson on 
labor and poverty. As this is against the first principle of 
husbandry, so another regulation is against the first principle 
of manufacture. You tithe flax, rape, and hemp, the rudi- 
ments of manufacture. Hence, in the north, you have no flax 
farmers, though there are many who cultivate flax. You give 
a premium for the growth of flax, a premium for the land car- 
riage and export of corn, and you give the parson the tithe of 
the land, labor, and cultivation occupied therein, contrary to 
the prosperity of either ; as far as you have settled, you are 
wrong, and wrong where you have unsettled. 

What is the tithe is one question, what is tithable is an- 
other. Claims have been made to the tithe of turf, the tithe 
of roots ; moduses have been disputed, litigation has been add- 
ed to oppression ; the business has been ever shamefully neg- 
lected by parhament, and has been left to be regulated, more 
or less, by the dexterity of the tithe-proctor, and the violence 
of the parish ; so that distress has not been confined to the 
people, it has extended to the parson ; your system is not only 
against the first principle of human existence — against the first 
principle of good husbandrj^ — against the first principle of 
manufacture — against the first principle of public quiet — it 
goes also against the security and dignity of tiie clergy. Their 
case has been reduced to two propositions — that they are not 
supported by the real tithe or tenths, and that they are sup- 
ported by a degrading annual contract ; the real tithe or tenth 
is therefore unnecessary for their support, for they have done 



DEBATE ON TITHES. 563 

without it ; and the annual contract is improper, by their own 
admission, and the interference of parhament proper therefore. 
Certainly the annual contract is below the dignity of a, clergy- 
man ; he is to make a bargain with the squire, the farmer, and 
the peasant, on a subject which they do, and he does not un- 
derstand ; the more his humanity and his erudition, the less 
his income ; it is a situation where the parson's property falls 
with his virtues, and rises with his bad qualities. Just so the 
parishioner — he loses by being ingenuous, and he saves by dis- 
honesty. The pastor of the people is made a spy on the hus- 
bandman ; he is reduced to become the annual teasing con- 
tractor and litigant, with a flock among whom he is to extend 
religion by his personal popularity ; an agent becomes neces- 
sary for him ; it relieves him in this situation, and this agent 
or proctor involves him in new odium and new disputes ; the 
squire not seldom defrauds him, and he is obliged to submit in 
repose and protection, and to reprise on the cottager ; so that 
it often happens that the clergyman shall not receive the thir- 
tieth, and the peasant shall pay more than the tenth ; the nat- 
ural result of this is a system which makes the parson depend- 
ent on the rich for Ms repose, and on the poor for his subsist- 
ence. I am sure the spirit of many clergymen, and the jus- 
tice of many country gentlemen, resist such an evil in many 
cases ; but the evil is laid in the law, which it is our duty and 
interest to regulate. 

From a situation So ungracious, from the disgrace and loss 
of making in his own person a little bargain with squires, farm- 
ers, and peasants, of each and every description, and from 
non-residence, the parson is obliged to take refuge in the as- 
sistance of a character, by name a tithe farmer, and by pro- 
fession an extortioner ; this extortioner becomes part of the 
establishment of the church ; by interest and situation, there 
are two descriptions of men he is sure to defraud, the one is 
the parson, the other the people. He collects sometimes at 
fifty per cent.; he gives the clergyman less than he ought to 
receive, and takes from the peasants more than they ought to 
pay ; he is not an agent who is to collect a certain rent ; he is 
an adventurer, who gives a certain rate for the privilege of 
making a bad use of an unsettled claim ; this claim over the 



664 SELECT SPEECHES OF HENRY GEATTAN. 

powers of collection, and what is teasing or provoking in the 
law, is in his hand an instrument not of justice but of usury ; 
he sometimes sets the tithes to a second tithe farmer, so that 
the land becomes a prey to a subordination of vultures. 

In arbitrary countries the revenue is collected by men who 
farm it, and it is a mode of oppression the most severe in the 
most arbitrary country ; the farming of the revenue is given to 
the Jews. We introduce this practice in the collection of 
tithes, and the tithe farmer frequently calls, in aid of Christi- 
anity, the arts of the synagogue ; — obnoxious on account of all 
this, the unoffending clergyman, thrown off by the rich upon 
the poor, cheated most exceedingly by his tithe farmer, and 
afterwards involved in his odium, becomes an object of out- 
rage ; his property and person are both attacked, and in both 
the rehgion and laws of your country scandalized and dis- 
graced. The same cause which produces a violent attack on 
the clergyman among the lower order of the community, pro- 
duces among some of the higher orders a languor and neutral- 
ity in defending him. Thus outraged and forsaken he comes 
to parliament ; we abhor the barbarity, we punish the tumult, 
we acknowledge the injury, but we are afraid of administering 
any radical or effectual relief ; because we are afraid of the 
claims of the church ; they claim the tenth of whatever by 
capital, industry or premium is produced from land. One 
thousand men claim this, and they claim this without any 
stipulation, for what appears for the support of the poor, the 
repair of the church, or even the residence of the preacher. 
Alarmed at the extent of such a claim, we conceive that the 
difficulty of collection is our security, and fear to give powers 
which may be necessary for the collection of customary tithes, 
lest the clergy should use those powers for the enforcing of a 
long catalogue of dangerous pretensions. We have reason 
for this apprehension ; and the last clause in the riot act has 
prompted a clergyman in the south to demand the tithe of 
Agistment, and to attempt to renew a confusion which your 
act intended to compose. The present state of the clergyman 
is, that he cannot collect his customary tithe Avithout the inter- 
ference of parhament ; and parliament cannot interfere without 
making a general regulation, lest any assistance now given 



DEBATE ON TITHES. 565 

should be applied to tlie enforcement of dormant claims — am- 
biguous and unlimited. 

Thus, I submit to this House, the situation of the clergy, as 
well as of the people, calls on you to take up at large the sub- 
ject of the tithe. You have two grounds for such an investi- 
gation — the distress of the clergy, and the distress of the 
people. 

Against your interference three arguments are objected, two 
of which are fictitious, and one only is sincere. The sincere 
but erroneous objection is, that we ought not to affect in any 
degree the rights of the church ; to which I answer briefly, 
that if, by the rights of the church, the customary tithes only 
are intended, we ought to interfere, to give and secure the full 
profit of them ; and if, by the rights of the church, are meant 
those dormant claims I allude to, we ought to interfere to pre- 
vent their operation. 

Of the two arguments, that one on petitions relies on the im- 
possibiHty of making any commutation ; but this argument 
rather fears the change than the difficulty. This argument is 
surely erroneous, in supposing that the whole wit of man, in 
parliament assembled, cannot, with all its ingenuity, find a 
method of providing for nme thousand persons. We, who pro- 
vide for so large a civil Hst, military list, pension Hst, revenue 
list, cannot provide for the church. What ! is the discovery of 
the present income of the church an impenetrable mystery ? 
Or is it an impossibility to give the same income, but arising 
from a different regulation ? fixing some standard in the price 
of grain ; or if commutation be out of the power of human ca- 
pacity, is this establishment of a modus impossible — different, 
perhaps, in the different counties, but practicable in aU ? or if 
not practicable, how comes it, that there should be a modus 
established in some parts of Ireland already for some tithable 
articles ? Is it impossible to have a moderate modus on corn, 
and some modus on pasture ? Or to lay on potatoes a very 
sma'l modus, or rather to exonerate them as well as flax? 
Would it not be practicable to get rid of the tithe-farmer, and 
give his plunder between the people and the parson ? If all 
this be a difficulty, it is a difficulty which is worthy of you ; 
and if you succeed in any part of it, you do service. 



566 SELECT SPEECHES OF HENRY GRATTAN. 

The other argument relies on the times ; and I acknowledge 
they are an objection to the bill at present, but none against 
the laying the foundation now, of a measure to take place on 
the restoration of public jaeace ; it may be an inducement to 
that peace ; it cannot be an incentive to the contrary ; it is giv- 
ing government the full force of reward and punishment ; and 
I apprehend, if no step whatsoever was taken, and no debate 
introduced at present, nothing would be done in future. I shall 
therefore trouble you with a motion now, and next session, with 
a bill on that subject. 

He then moved the following resolution : 

"That, if it shall appear, at the commencement of the next session of 
parliament, that public tranquillity has been restored in those parts of the 
kingdom that have been lately disturbed, and due obedience paid to the 
laws, this House will take into consideration the subject of tithes, and 
endeavor to form some plan for the honorable support of the clergy, and 
the ease of the people." 



ON THE DOWNFALL OF BONAPAETE. 

In THE House of Commons, May, 1815. 



Sir : I sincerely sympathize with the honorable gentlemen 
who spoke last in his anxiety on this important question ; and 
my solicitude is increased by a knowledge that I differ in 
opinion from my oldest political friends. I have further to 
contend against the additional weight given to the arguments 
of the noble lord who moved the amendment, by the purity of 
his mind, the soundness of his judgment, and the elevation of 
his rank. I agree with my honorable friends in thinking that 
we ought not to impose a government upon France. I agree 
with them in deprecating the evil of war ; but I deprecate still 
more the double evil of a peace without securities, and a war 
without allies. Sir, I wish it was a question between peace 



ON THE DOWNFALL OF BONAPAETE. 567 

and war ; but, unfortunately for the country, very painfully to 
us, and most injuriously to all ranks of men, peace is not in 
our option ; and the real question is, whether we shall go to 
war when our allies are assembled, or fight the battle when 
those allies shall be dissipated? 

Sir, the French government is war ; it is a statocracy, elect- 
ive, aggressive, and predatory ; her armies hve to fight, and 
fight to live ; their constitution is essentially war, and the ob- 
ject of that war the conquest of Europe. What such a person 
as Bonaparte, at the head of such a constitution, will do, you 
may judge by what he has done ; and, first, he took possession 
of the greater part of Europe ; he made his son King of Eome ; 
he made his son-in-law Viceroy of Italy ; he made his brother 
King of Holland ; he made his brother-in-law King of Naples ; 
he imprisoned the King of Spain ; he banished the Regent of 
Portugal, and formed his plan to take possession of the Crown 
of England. England had checked his designs ; her trident 
had stirred up his empire from its foundation ; he complained 
of her tyranny at sea ; but it was her power at sea which ar- 
rested his tyranny on land — the navy of England saved Europe. 
Knowing this, he knew the conquest of England became ne- 
cessary for the accomplishment of the conquest of Europe, 
and the destruction of her marine necessary for the conquest 
of England. Accordingly, besides raising an army of sixty 
thousand men for the invasion of England, he apphed himself 
to the destruction of her commerce, the foundation of her 
naval power. In pursuit of this object, and on his plan of a 
western empire, he conceived, and in part executed, the design 
of consigning to phmder and destruction the vast regions of 
Eussia ; he quits the genial clime of the temperate zone ; he 
bursts through the narrow limits of an immense empire ; he 
abandons comfort and security, and he hurries to the pole, to 
hazard them all, and with them the companions of his victories, 
and the fame and fruits of his crimes and his talents, on specu- 
lation of leaving in Europe, throughout the whole of its extent, 
no one free or independent nation. To oppose this huge con- 
ception of mischief and despotism, the great potentate of the 
north, from his gloomy recesses, advances to defend himself 
against the voracity of ambition amid the sterihty of his em- 



668 SELECT SPEECHES OF HENRY GEATTAN. 

pii-e. Ambition is omnivorous — it feasts on famine and sheds 
tons of blood, that it may starve in ice, in order to commit a 
robbery on desolation. The power of the North, I say, joins 
another prince, whom Bonaparte had deprived of almost the 
whole of his authority, the King of Prussia, and then another 
potentate, whom Bonaparte had deprived of the principal part 
of his dominions, the Emperor of Austria. These three pow- 
ers, physical causes, final justice, the influence of your victo- 
ries in Spain and Portugal, and the spuit given to Europe by 
the achievements and renown of your great commander, (the 
Duke of Wellington,) together with the precipitation of his 
own ambition, combine to accomphsh his destruction. Bona- 
parte is conquered. He who said : " I will be like the Most 
High ; " he who smote the nations with a continual stroke — 
this short-lived son of the morning, Lucifer, falls, and the 
Earth is at rest ; the phantom of royalty passes on to nothing, 
and the three kings to the gates of Paris ; there they stand, 
the late victims of his ambition, and now the disposers of 
his destiny and the masters of his empire ; without provo- 
cation he had gone to their countries with fire and sword ; 
with the greatest provocation they come to his country 
with life and liberty ; they do an act unparalleled in the an- 
nals of history, such as nor envy, nor time, nor mahce, nor 
prejudice, nor ingratitude can efface ; they give to his subjects 
liberty, and to himself hfe and royalty. This is greater than 
conquest ! The present race must confess their virtues, and 
ages to come must crown their monuments, and place them 
above heroes and kings in glory everlasting. 

When Bonaparte states the conditions of the treaty of Fon- 
tainebleau are not performed, he forgets one of them, namely, 
the condition by which he lives. It is very true there was a 
mixture of policy and prudence in this measure ; but it was a 
great act of magnanimity notwithstanding, and it is not in 
Providence to turn such an act to your disadvantage. With 
respect to the other act, the mercy shown to his people, I have 
underrated it ; the alhes did not give liberty to France, they 
enabled her to give a constitution to herself, a better constitu- 
tion than that which, with much laboriousness, and circum- 
spection, and deliberation, and procrastination, the philoso- 



SELECT SPEECHES OF HENEY GEATTAN. 569 

pliers fabricated, when the Jacobins trampled down the flimsy 
work, murdered the Yain philosophers, drove out the craz}'^ re- 
formers, and remained masters of the field in the triumph of 
superior anarchy and confusion ; better than that, I say, 
which the Jacobin destroyed, better than that which he after- 
wards formed, with some method in his madness, and more 
madness in his method ; with such a horror of power, that in 
his plan of a constitution he left out a government, and with 
so many wheels that everything was in movement and nothing 
in concert, so that the machine took fire from its own velocity 
in the midst of death and mkth, with images emblematic of 
the pubhc disorder, goddesses of reason turned fool, and of 
liberty turned fury. At length the French found their advan- 
tage in adopting the sober and unaffected security of King, 
Lords, and Commons, on the idea of that form of government 
which your ancestors procured by their firmness, and main- 
tained by their discretion. The people had attempted to give 
the French liberty, and had failed ; the wise men (so her 
philosophers called themselves) had attempted to give fiberty 
to France, and had failed ; it remained for the extraordinary 
destiay of the French to receive then' free constitution from 
kings. This constitution Bonaparte has destroyed, together 
with the treaty of Fontainebleau, and having broken both, 
desires your confidence ; Russia confided, and was deceived ; 
Austria confided, and was deceived. Have we forgotten the 
treaty of Luneville, and his abominable conduct to the Swiss ? 
Spain and other nations of Europe confided, and all were de- 
ceived. During the whole of this time he was charging on 
England the continuation of the war, while he was, with uni- 
form and universal perfidy, breaking his own treaties of peace 
for the purpose of renewing the war, to end it in what was 
worse than war itseK — his conquest of Europe. 

But now he repents and will be faithful ! he says so, but he 
says the contrary also : "I protest against the vaKdity of the 
treaty of Fontainebleau ; it was not done with the consent of 
the people ; I protest against everything done in my absence ; 
see my speech to the army and people ; see the speech of my 
council to me." The treaty of Paris was done in his absence ; 
by that treaty were returned the French colonies and prisoners ; 



570 ON THE DOWNFALL OF BONAPARTE. 

thus he takes life and empire from the treaty of Fontainebleau, 
with an original design to set it aside ; and he takes prisoners 
and colonies from the treaty of Paris, which he afterwards sets 
aside also ; and he musters an army, by a singular fatahty, in 
a great measure composed of troops who owe thek enlarge- 
ment, and of a chief who owes his hfe, to the poAvers he fights, 
by the resources of France, who owes to those powers her sal- 
vation. He gives a reason for this : " Nothing is good which 
was done witliout the consent of the people" (having been de- 
posed by that people, and elected by the army in their defiance.) 
With such sentiments, which go not so much against this or 
that particular treaty as against the principles of affiance, the 
question is, whether, with a view to the security of Europe, you 
will take the faith of Napoleon, or the army of your aUies ? 

Gentlemen maintain, that we are not equal to the contest ; 
that is to say, confederated Europe cannot fight France single- 
handed. If that be your opinion, you are conquered this mo- 
ment ; you are conquered in spirit : but that is not your 
opinion, nor was it the opinion of your ancestors. They thought, 
and I hope transmitted the sentiment as your birthright, that 
the armies of these islands could always fight, and fight with 
success their own numbers. See now the numbers you are to 
command : by this treaty you are to have in the field what 
may be reckoned not less than six hundred thousand men ; 
besides that stipulated army you have at command, what may 
be reckoned as much more, — I say you and the alhes. The 
Emperor of Austria alone has an army of five hundred thousand 
men, of which one hundred and twenty thousand were sent to 
Italy to oppose Murat, who is now beaten ; Austria is not, then, 
occupied by Murat ; Prussia is not occupied by the Saxon, nor 
Russia by the Pole, — at least, not so occupied that they have 
not ample and redundant forces for this war ; you have a gen- 
eral never surpassed, and allies in heart and confidence. See 
now Bonaparte's muster : he has lost his external dominions, 
and is reduced from a population of one hundred millions, to a 
population of twenty-five mOUons ; besides, he has lost the 
power of fascination, for though he may be called the subverter 
of Kings, he has not proved to be the redresser of grievances. 
Switzerland has not forgotten, all Europe remembers the nature 



SELECT SPEECHES OF HENRY G RATTAN. 571 

of his reformation, and that the best reform he introduced was 
worse than the worst government he subverted. As little can 
Spain or Prussia forget what was worse even than his reform- 
ations, the march of his armies : it was not an army ; it was a 
military government in march, hke the Roman legions in Rome's 
worst time, Italica or Rapax, responsible to nothing, nor God, 
nor man. Thus he has administered a cure to his partisans for 
any enthusiasm that might have been annexed to his name, 
and is now reduced to his resources at home ; it is at home 
that he must feed his arrnies and find his strength, and at home 
he wants artillery, he wants cavalry ; he has no money, he has 
no credit, he has no title. With respect to his actual numbers, 
they are not ascertained, but it may be collected that they bear 
no proportion to those of the allies. 

But gentlemen presume that the French nation will rise in 
his favor as soon as we enter their country. We entered their 
country before, but they did not rise in his favor ; on the con- 
trary, they deposed him ; the article of deposition is given at 
length. It is said we endeavor to impose a government on 
France. The French armies elect a conqueror for Europe, and 
our resistance to this conqueror is called imposing a govern- 
ment on France ; if we put down this chief, we relieve France 
as well as Europe from a foreign yoke, and this dehverance is 
called the imposition of a government on France. He — he 
imposed a government on France ; he imposed a foreign yoke 
on France ; he took from the French their property by contri- 
bution ; he took their children by conscription ; he lost her 
empire, and, a thing almost unimaginable, he brought the enemy 
to the gates of Paris. We, on the contrary, formed a project, 
as appears from a paper of 1805, which preserved the integrity 
of the French empire ; the allies, in 1814, not only preserved 
the integrity of the empire as it stood in 1792, but gave her 
her hberty, and they now afford her the only chance of redemp- 
tion. Against these allies will France now combine, and hav- 
ing received from them her empire as it stood before the war, 
with additions in consequence of their deposition of Bona- 
parte, and having gotten back her capital, her colonies, and 
her prisoners, will she break the treaty to which she owes 
them ; rise up against the allies who gave them ; break her 



572 SELECT SPEECHES OF HENRY GRATTAN. 

oatli of allegiance ; destroy the constitution slie has formed ; 
depose the King she has chosen ; rise up against her own de- 
liverance, in support of contribution and conscription, to per- 
petuate her jjolitical danmktion under the yoke of a stranger ? 

Gentlemen say France has elected him. They have no 
grounds for so saying ; he had been repulsed at Antibes, and 
he lost thirty men ; he landed near Cannes the first of March, 
with one thousand one hundred. With this force he pro- 
ceeded to Grasse, Digne, Gap, and on the seventh he entered 
Grenoble ; he there got from the desertion of regiments above 
three thousand men and a park of artillery ; with this additional 
force he proceeded to Lyons ; he left Lyons with about seven 
thousand strong, and entered Paris on the twentieth, with all 
the troops of the line that had been sent to oppose him ; the 
following day he reviewed his troops, and nothing could equal 
the shouts of the army except the silence of the people. This 
was, in the strictest sense of the word, a military election : it 
was an act where the army deposed the civil government ; it 
was the march of a military chief over a conquered people. The 
nation did not rise to resist Bonaparte or to defend Louis, be- 
cause the nation could not rise upon the army ; her mind as well 
as her constitution was conquered ; in fact, there was no nation ; 
everytliing was army, and everything was conquest. France 
had passed through all the degrees of political probation, revo- 
lution, counter-revolution, wild democracy'', intense despotism, 
outrageous anarchy, philosophy, vanity, and madness ; and now 
she lay exhausted, for horse, foot, and dragoons to exercise her 
power, to appoint her a master — captain or cornet who should 
put the brand of his name upon her government, calhng it his 
dynasty, and under this stamp of dishonor pass her on to 
futurity. 

Bonaparte, it seems, is to reconcile everything by the gift of 
a free constitution. He took possession of Holland, he did 
not give her a free constitution ; he took possession of Spain, 
he did not give her a free constitution ; he took possession of 
Switzerland, whose independence he had guaranteed, he did 
not give her a free constitution ; he took possession of Italy 
he did not give her a free constitution ; he took possession of 
France, he did not give her a free constitution ; on the con- 



ON THE DOWNFALL OP BONAPARTE. 573 

trary, lie destroyed the directorial constitution, lie destroyed 
tlie consular constitution, and lie destroyed the late constitu- 
tion formed on the plan of England ! But now he is, with the 
assistance of the Jacobins, to give her hberty ; that is, the man 
who can bear no freedom, unites to form a constitution with a 
body who can bear no government ! In the mean time, while 
he professes liberty, he exercises despotic power, he annihilates 
the nobles, he banishes the deputies of the people, and he se- 
questers the property of the emigrants. " Now he is to give 
hberty !" I have seen his constitution, as exhibited in the 
newspaper ; there are faults innumerable in the frame of it, and 
more in the manner of accepting it : it is to be passed by sub- 
scription without discussion, the troops are to send deputies, 
and the army is to preside. There is some cunning, however, 
in making the subscribers to the constitution renounce the 
House of Bourbon ; they are to give their word for the depo- 
sition of the King, and take Napoleon's word for their own 
liberty ; the offer imports nothing which can be relied on, ex- 
cept that he is afraid of the aUies. Disperse the alliance, and 
farewell to the liberty of Franco and the safety of Europe. 

Under this head of ability to combat Bonaparte, I think we 
should not despair. 

With respect to the justice of the cause, we must observe 
Bonaparte has broken the treaty of Fontainebleau ; he con- 
fesses it ; he declares'he never considered himself as bound by 
it. If, then, that treaty is out of the way, he is as he was be- 
fore it — at war. As Emperor of the French, he has broken 
the treaty of Paris ; that treaty was founded on his abdication ; 
Avhen he proposes to observe the treaty of Paris, he proposes 
what he cannot do unless he abdicates. 

The proposition that we should not interfere with the gov- 
ernment of other nations is true, but true with qualifications. 
If the government of any other country contains an insurrec- 
tionary principle, as France did when she offered to aid the in- 
surrections of her neighbors, your interference is warranted ; 
if the government of another country contains the principle of 
universal empire, as France did, and promulgated, your inter- 
ference is justifiable. Gentlemen may call this internal gov- 
ernment, but I call this conspiracy ; if the government of 



574 SELECT SPEECHES OF HENRY GRATTAN. 

another country maintains a predatory army, such as Bona- 
parte's, "W'ith a view to hostihty and conquest, your interference 
is just. He may call this internal government, but I call this 
a preparation for war. No doubt he will accompany this with 
oifers of peace; but such offers of peace are nothing more 
than one of the arts of war, attended, most assuredly, by 
charging on you the odium of a long and protracted contest, 
and with much common-place, and many good saws and say- 
ings of the miseries of bloodshed, and the savings and good 
husbandry of peace, and the comforts of a quiet life ; but if 
you hsten to this, you will be much deceived ; not only deceived, 
but you will be beaten. Again, if the government of another 
country covers more ground in Europe, and destroys the bal- 
lance of power, so as to threaten the independence of other 
nations, this is a cause of your interference. Such was the 
principle upon which we acted in the best times ; such was the 
principle of the grand alliance ; such the triple alhauce ; and 
such the quadruple ; and by such principles has Europe not 
only been regulated, but protected. If a foreign government 
does any of those acts I have mentioned, we have a cause of 
war ; but if a foreign power does all of them, forms a conspi- 
racy for universal empire, keeps up an army for that purpose, 
employs that army to overturn the balance of power, and at- 
tempts the conquest of Europe — attempts, do I say? in a 
great degree achieves it (for what else was Bonaparte's domin- 
ion before the battle of Leipsic ?) and then receives an over- 
throw, owes its deliverance to treaties which give that power its 
hfe, and these countries their security (for what did you get 
from France but security ?) if this power, I say, avails itself of 
the conditions in the treaties which give it colonies, prisoners, 
and deliverance, and breaks those conditions which give you 
security, and resumes the same situation which renders this 
power capable of repeating the same atrocity, has England, or 
has she not, a right of war ? 

Having considered the two questions, — that of abihty, and 
that of right, — and having shown that you are justified on 
either consideration to go to war, let me now suppose that you 
treat for peace. First, you will have a peace upon a war es- 
tablishment, and then a war without your present allies. It is 



ON THE DOWNFALL OF BONAPABTE. 575 

not certain tliat you will liave any of them, but it is certain 
that you wiU not have the same combination while Bonaparte 
increases his power by confirmation of his title and by further 
preparation ; so that you will have a bad peace and a bad war. 
"Were I disposed to treat for peace, I would not agree to the 
amendment, because it disperses your allies and strengthens 
your enemy, and says to both, we will quit our alliance to con- 
firm Napoleon on the throne of France, that he may hereafter 
more advantageously fight us, as he did before, for the throne 
of England. 

Gentlemen set forth the pretensions of Bonaparte ; gentle- 
men say that he has given hberty to the press. He has given 
liberty to publication, to be afterwards tried and punished ac- 
cording to the present constitution of France — as a military 
chief pleases ; that is to say, he has given hberty to the French 
to hang themselves. Gentlemen say, he has in his dominions 
abohshed the slave trade, I am unwilling to deny him praise 
for such an act ; but if we praise him for giving hberty to the 
African, let us not assist him in imposing slavery on the Euro- 
pean. Gentlemen say, Will you make war upon character ? 
But the question is, will you trust a government without one ? 
What will you do if you are conquered? say gentlemen. I 
answer, the very thing you must do if you treat, — abandon 
the Low Countries. But the question is, in which case are you 
most likely to be conquered — with allies or without them? 
Either you must abandon the Low Countries, or you must pre- 
serve them by arms ; for Bonaparte wiU not be withheld by 
treaty. If you abandon them, you will lose your situation on 
the globe ; and instead of being a medium of communication 
and commerce between the new world and the old, you will be- 
come an anxious station between two fires — the continent of 
America, rendered hostile by the intrigues of France ; and the 
continent of Europe, possessed by her arms. It then remains 
for you to determine, if you do not abandon the Low Countries, 
in what way you mean to defend them, alone or with allies. 

Gentlemen complain of the allies, and say, they have par- 
titioned such a country, and transferred such a country, and 
seized on such a country. What ! will they quarrel with their 
ally, who has possessed himself of a part of Saxony, and 



676 SELECT SPEECHES OP HENEY GRATTAN. 

shake hands with Bonaparte, who proposed to take possession 
of England ? If a Prince takes Yonice, we are indignant ; 
but if he seizes on a great part of Europe, stands covered with 
the blood of millions, and the spoils of half mankind, our in- 
dignation ceases ; vice becomes gigantic, conquers the under- 
standing, and mankind begin by wonder, and conclude by wor- 
ship. The character of Bonaparte is admirably calculated for 
this effect ; he invests himself with much theatrical grandeur ; 
he is a great actor in the tragedy of his own government ; the 
fire of his genius precipitates on universal empire, certain to 
destroy his neighbors or himself ; better formed to acquire em- 
pire than to keep it, he is a hero and a calamity, formed to 
punish France and to perplex Europe. 

The authority of Mr. Fox has been alluded to, — a great au- 
thority and a great man : his name excites tenderness and 
wonder ; to do justice to that immortal person you must not 
limit your view to this country ; his genius was not confined 
to England, it acted three hundred miles off in breaking the 
chains of -Ireland ; it was seen three thousand miles off in com- 
municating freedom to the Americans ; it was visible, I know 
not how far off, in amelioratiag the condition of the Indian ; it 
was discernible on the coast of Africa in accomplishing the 
abohtion of the slave trade. You are to measure the magni- 
tude of his mind by parallels of latitude. His heart was as 
soft as that of a woman ; his intellect was adamant ; his weak- 
nesses were virtues ; they protected him against the hard habit 
of a politician, and assisted nature to make him amiable and 
interesting. The question discussed by Mr. Fox in 1792, was, 
whether you would treat with a revolutionary government ? 
The present is, whether you will confirm a military and a hos- 
tile one ? You will observe that when Mr. Fox was willing to 
treat, the French, it was understood, were ready to evacuate 
the Low Countries. If you confirm the present government, 
you must expect to lose them. Mr. Fox objected to the idea 
of driving France upon her resources, lest you should make 
her a military government. The question now is, whether 
you will make that military government perpetual. I there- 
fore do not think the theory of Mr. Fox can be quoted 
against us ; and the practice of Mr. Fox tends to establish our 



ON THE DOWNFALL OF BONAPARTE. 577 

proposition, for lie treated witli Bonaparte and failed, Mr. 
Fox was tenacious of England, and would never yield an iota 
of her superiority ; but tlie failure of tlie attempt to treat was 
to be found, not in Mr. Fox, but in Bonaparte. 

On the Frencli subject, speaking of authority, we cannot for- 
get Mr. Burke — Mr. Burke, the prodigy of nature and acquisi- 
tion. He read everything, he saw everything, he foresaw 
everything. His knowledge of history amounted to a power 
of foretelling ; and when he perceived the wild work that was 
doing in France, that great political physician, intelHgent of 
symptoms, distinguished between the access of fever and the 
force of health ; and what other men conceived to be the vigor 
of her constitution, he knew to be no more than the paroxj^sm 
of her madness, and then, prophet-like, he pronounced the 
destinies of France, and, in his prophetic fury, admonished 
nations. 

Gentlemen speak of the Bourbon family. I have already 
said, we should not force the Bourbon upon France ; but w^e 
owe it to departed (I would rather say to interrupted) great- 
ness, to observe, that the House of Bourbon was not tyran- 
nical ; under her, everything, except the administration of the 
country, was open to animadversion ; every subject was open 
to discussion — philosophical, ecclesiastical, and political, so 
that learning, and arts, and sciences, made progress. Even 
England consented to borrow not a httle from the temperate 
meridian of that government. Her court stood controlled by 
opinion, hmited by principles of honor, and softened by the 
influence of manners : and, on the whole, there was an amenity 
in the condition of France, which rendered the French an ami- 
able, an enlightened, a gallant, and an accomplished race. 
Over this gallant race you see imposed an Oriental despotism. 
Their present court (Bonaparte's court) has gotten the idiom 
of the East as well as her constitution ; a fantastic and bar- 
baric expression : an unreality, which leaves in the shade the 
modesty of truth, and states nothing as it is, and everything 
as it is not. The attitude is affected, the taste is corrupted, 
and the intellect perverted. 

Do you wish to confirm this military tyranny in the heart of 
Europe? A tyranny founded on the triumph of the army 



578 SELECT SPEECHES OF HENRY GRATTAN. 

over the principles of civil government, tending to universalize 
throughout Europe the domination of the sword, and to 
reduce to paper and parchment, Magna Charta and all our 
civil institutions. An experiment such as no country ever 
made, and no good country would ever permit ; to relax the 
moral and religious influences ; to set Heaven and Earth 
adrift from one another, and make God Almighty a tolerated 
alien in His own creation ; an insurrectionary hope to every 
bad man in the community, and a frightful lesson to profit and 
power, vested in those who have pandered their allegiance from 
King to Emperor, and now found their pretensions to domina- 
tion on the merit of breaking their oaths and deposing their 
sovereign. Should you do anything so monstrous as to leave 
your allies in order to confirm such a system ; should you for- 
get your name, forget your ancestors, and the inheritance they 
have left you of morality and renown; should you astonish 
Europe, by quitting your allies to render immortal such a com- 
position, would not the nations exclaim, " You have very pro- 
vidently watched over our interests, and very generously have 
you contributed to our service, and do you falter now? In 
vain have you stopped in your own person the flying fortunes 
of Europe ; in vain have you taken the eagle of Napoleon, 
and snatched invincibility from his standard, if now, when con- 
federated Europe is ready to march, you take the lead in the 
desertion, and preach the penitence of Bonaparte and the 
poverty of England ? 

As to her poverty, you inust not consider the money you 
■spend in your defence, but the fortune you would lose if you 
were not defended ; and further, you must recollect you will 
pay less to an immediate war than to a peace with a war 
establishment, and a war to follow it. EecoUect further, that 
whatever be your resources, they must outlast those of all your 
enemies ; and further, that your empire cannot be saved by a 
calculation. Besides, your wealth is only a part of your situa- 
tion. The name you have estabhshed, the deeds you have 
achieved, and the part you have sustained, preclude you from- 
a second place among nations ; and when you cease to be the 
first, you are nothing. 



CHAELES PHILLIPS, ESQ. 



SPEECH AT AN AGaKEGATE MEETING OF THE 
ROMAN CATHOLICS OF CORK. 



It is with no small degree of self-congratulation that I at 
length find myself in a province which every glance of the 
eye, and every throb of the heart, tells me is truly Irish ; and 
that congratulation is not a little enhanced by finding that you 
receive me not quite as a stranger. Indeed, if to respect the 
Christian without regard to his creed, if to love the country 
but the more for its calamities, if to hate oppression though it 
be robed in power, if to venerate integrity though it pine un- 
der persecution, gives a man any claim to your recognition, 
then, indeed, I am not a stranger amongst you. 

There is a bond of union between brethren, however dis- 
tant ; there is a sympathy between the virtuous, however 
separated ; there is a heaven-born instinct by which the as- 
sociates of the heart become at once acquainted, and kindred 
natures, as it were by magic, see in the face of a stranger, 
the features of a friend. Thus it is, that, though we never 
met, you.hail in me the sweet association, and I feel myself 
amongst you even as if I were in the home of my nativity. 
But this my knowledge of you was not left to chance ; nor 
was it left to the records of your charity, the memorials of 
your patriotism, your municipal magnificence, or your com- 
mercial splendor ; it came to me hallowed by the accents of 
that tongue on which Ireland has so often hung with ecstasy, 
heightened by the eloquence and endeared by the sincerity 
of, I hope, our mutual friend. Let me congratulate him on 



580 CHARLES PHILLIPS, ESQ. 

having become in some degree naturalized in a province, 
where the spirit of the elder day seems to have lingered ; and 
let me congratulate you on the acquisition of a man who is at 
once the zealous advocate of your cause, and a practical in- 
stance of the injustice of your oppressions. Surely, surely if 
merit had fair play, if splendid talents, if indefatigable in- 
dustry, if great research, if unsullied principle, if a heart full 
of the finest affections, if a mind matured in every manly ac- 
complishment, in short, if every noble, public quality, mel- 
lowed and reflected in the pure mirror of domestic virtue^ 
could entitle a subject to distinction in a state, Mr. O'Connell 
should be distinguished ; but, it is his crime to be a Catholic, 
and his curse to be an Irishman. Simpleton ! he prefers his 
conscience to a place, and the love of his country to a partici- 
pation in her plunder ! Indeed he v/ill never rise. If he joined 
the bigots of my sect, he might be a sergeant ; if he joined 
the infidels of 'your sect, he might enjoy a pension, and there 
is no knowing whether some Orange corporator, at an Orange 
anniversary, might not modestly yield him the precedence of 
giving "the glorious and immortal memory" Oh, yes; he 
might be privileged to get drunk in gratitude to the man who 
colonized ignorance in his native land, aud left to his creed 
the legacy of legalized persecution. Nor would he stand alone, 
no matter what might be the measure of his disgrace, or the 
degree of his dereliction. 

You well know there are many of your own community who 
woviid leave him at the distance-post. In contemplating their 
recreancy, I should be almost tempted to smile at the exhibi- 
tion of their pretensions, if there was not a kind of moral 
melancholy intermingled, that changed satire into pity, and 
ridicule into contempt. For my part I behold them in the 
apathy of their servitude, as I would some miserable maniac 
in the contentment of his captivity. Poor creature ! when all 
that raised him from the brute is levelled, and his glorious 
intellect is mouldering in ruins, you may see him with his song 
of triumph, and his crown of straw, a fancied freeman amid 
the clanking of his chains, and an imaginary monarch beneath 
the inflictions of his keeper ! Merciful God ! is it not almost 
an argument for the skeptic and the disbeliever, when we see 



TO THE EOMAN CATHOLICS OP COEK. 581 

the human shape almost without an aspiration of the human 
soul, separated by no boundary from the beasts that perish — 
beholding with indifference the captivity of their country, the 
persecution of their creed, and the helpless, hopeless destiny 
of their children ? But they have nor creed, nor consciences, 
nor country ; their god is gold, their gospel is a contract, 
their church a counting-house, their characters a commodity ; 
they never pray bvit for the opportunities of corruption, and 
hold their consciences, as they do their government deben- 
tures, at a price proportioned to the misfortunes of their coun- 
try. But let us turn from these mendicants of disgrace ; 
though Ireland is doomed to the stain of their birth, her mind 
need not be sullied by their contemplation. I turn from them 
with pleasure to the contemplation of your cause, which, as 
far as argument can affect it, stands on a sublime and splendid 
elevation. Every obstacle has vanished into air ; every favor- 
able ckcumstance has hardened into adamant. The Pope, 
whom childhood was taught to lisp as the enemy of religion, 
and age shuddered at as a prescriptive calamity, has by his 
example put the princes of Christendom to shame. 

This day of miracles, in which the human heart has been 
strung to its extremest point of energy ; this day, to which 
posterity will look for instances of every crime and every vir- 
tue, holds not in its page of wonders a more sublime phenome- 
non, than that calumniated pontiff. Placed at the very pin- 
nacle of human elevation, surrounded by the pomp of the 
Vatican and the splendors of the court, pouring the mandates 
of Christ from the throne of the CsBsars, nations were his sub- 
jects, kings were his companions, religion was his handmaid ; 
he went forth gorgeous with the accumulated dignity of ages, 
every knee bending, and every eye blessing the prince of one 
world, and the prophet of another. Have we not seen him in 
one moment, his crown crumbled, his sceptre a reed, his throne 
a shadow, his home a dungeon ! But if we have. Catholics, it 
was only to show how inestimable is human virtue compared 
with human grandeur ; it was only to show those whose faith 
was failing, and whose fears were strengthening, that the 
simplicity of the patriarchs, the piety of the saints, and the 
patience of the martyrs, had not wholly vanished. 



582 CHARLES PHILLIPS, ESQ. 

Perhaps it was also ordained to show the bigot at home, as 
well as the tyrant abroad, that though the person might be 
chained, and the motive calumniated, religion was still strong 
enough to support her sons, and to confound, if she could not 
reclaim, her enemies. No threats could awe, no promises 
could tempt, no sufferings could appall him ; amid the damps 
of his dungeon he dashed away the cup in which the pearl 
of his liberty was to be dissolved. Only reflect on the state 
of the world at that moment ? All around him was convulsed, 
the very foundations of the earth seemed giving way, the 
comet was let loose, " from its fiery hair shook pestilence and 
death," the- twilight was gathering, the tempest was roaring, 
the darkness was at hand ; but he towered sublime, hke the 
last mountain in the deluge — majestic, not less in his elevation 
than in his solitude, immutable amid change, magnificent amid 
ruin, the last remnant of earth's beauty, the last resting-place 
of heaven's fight ! 

Thus have the terrors of the Vatican retreated ; thus has 
that cloud which hovered o'er your cause, brightened at once 
into a sign of your faith, and an assurance of yoiu' victory. 
Another obstacle, the omnipotence of France ; I know it was 
a pretence, but it was made an obstacle. What has become of 
it ? The spell of her invincibility destroyed, the spirit of her 
armies broken, her immense boundary dismembered, and the 
lord of her empire become the exile of a rock. She allows 
fancy no fear, and bigotry no speciousness ; and as if in the 
very operation of the change to point the purpose of your re- 
demption, the hand that replanted the rejected hly was that of 
an Irish Catholic. Perhaps it is not also unworthy of remark, 
that the last day of her triumph, and the first of her decline, 
was that on which her insatiable chieftain smote the holy head 
of your religion. You will hardly suspect I am imbued with 
the follies of superstition ; but when the man now unborn shall 
trace the story of that eventful day, he will see the adopted 
child of fortune, borne on the wings of victory from clime to 
clime, marking every movement with a triumph, and every 
pause with a crown, till time, space, and seasons, nay, even na- 
ture herself, seeming to vanish from before him — in the blas- 
phemy of his ambition he smote the apostle of his God, and 



TO THE ROMAN CATHOLICS OF COEK. 583 

dared to raise tlie everlasting Cross amid his perishable tro- 
phies ! I am no fanatic : but is it not remarkable ? May it 
not be one of those signs which the Deity has sometimes given, 
in compassion to our infirmity ? — signs which, in the punish- 
ment of one nation, not unfrequently denote the warning to 
another : 

" Signs sent by God to mark tlie -will of Heaven : 
Signs, -which bid nations weep and be forgiven." 

The argument, however, is taken from the bigot ; and those 
whose consciousness taught them to expect what your loyalty 
should have taught them to repel, can no longer oppose you 
from the terrors of invasion. Thus, then, the papal phantom 
and the French threat have vanished into nothing. Ano her 
obstacle, the tenets of your creed. Has England still to leam 
them? I will tell her where. Let her ask Canada, the last 
plank of her American shipwreck. Let her ask Portugal the 
first omen of her European splendor. Let her ask Spain, the 
most Catholic country in the universe, her Catholic friends, her 
Catholic aUies, her rivals in the triumph, her reliance in the re- 
treat, her last stay when the world had deserted her. They 
must have told her on the field of blood, whether it was true 
that they " kept no faith in heretics." 

Alas, alas ! how miserable a thing is bigotry, when every 
friend puts it to the blush, and every triumph but rebukes its 
weakness. If England continued still to accredit this calumny, 
I would direct her for conviction to the hero, for whose gift 
alone she owes us an eternity of gratitude ; whom we have 
seen leading the van of universal emancipation, decking his 
wreath with the flowers of every soil, and filling h:s army with 
the soldiers of every sect ; before whose splendid dawn, every 
tear exhaling, and every vapor vanishing, the colors of the Eu- 
ropean world have revived, and the spirit of European liberty 
(may no crime avert the omen !) seems to have arisen ! Sup- 
pose he was a Catholic, could this have been ? Suppose Catho- 
Hcs did not follow him, could this have been ? Did the Catho- 
lic Cortes inquire his faith when they gave him the supreme 
command? Did the Eegent of Portugal withhold from his 
creed the reward of his valor ? Did the Cathohc soldier pause 
at Salamanca to dispute upon polemics ? Did the Catholic 



684 CHARLES PHILLIPS, ESQ. 

cliieftain prove upon Barrossa that he kept no faith with here- 
tics ? or did the creed of Spain, the same with that of France, 
the opposite of that of England, prevent their association in 
the field of liberty ? Oh, no, no, no ! the citizen of every chme, 
the friend of every color, and the child of every creed, Liberty 
walks abroad in the ubiquity of her benevolence : alike to her 
the varieties of faitli and the vicissitudes of country ; she has 
no object but the happiness of man, no bounds but the extre- 
mities of creation. Yes, yes, it was reserved for Wellington to 
redeem his own country when he was regenerating every other. 
It was reserved for him to show how vile were the aspersions 
on your creed, how generous were the glowings of your grati- 
tude. He was a Protestant, yet Catholics trusted him ; he was 
a Protestant, yet Catholics advanced him ? He is a Protest- 
ant Knight in CathoUc Portugal; he is a Protestant Duke in 
Catholic Spain ; he is a Protestant commander of Catholic 
armies : he is more ; he is the living proof of the Catholics' 
liberahty, and the undeniable refutation of the Protestants' 
injustice. 

Gentlemen, as a Protestant, though I may blush for the big- 
otry of many of my creed who continue obstinate, in the teeth 
of this conviction, still, were I a Cathohc, I should feel httle 
triumph in the victory. I should only hang my head at the 
distresses which this warfare occasioned to my country. I 
should only think how long she had writhed in the agony of 
her disunion ; how long she had bent, fettered by slaves, ca- 
joled by blockheads, and plundered by adventurers ; the pro- 
verb of the fool, the prey of the politician, the dupe of the de- 
signing, the experiment of the desperate ; struggling as it were 
between her own fanatical and infatuated parties, those hell- 
engendered serpents which enfold her, like the Trojan seer, 
even at the worship of her altars, and crush her to death in the 
very embraces of her children ! It is time (is it not ?) that 
she should be extricated. The act would be proud, the means 
would be Christian ; mutual forbearance, mutual indulgence, 
mutual concession : I would say to the Protestant, " Concede ;" 
I would say to the Catholic, " Forgive ;" I would say to both, 
" Though you bend not at the same shrine, you have a common 
(Srod, and a common country ; the one has commanded love, 



TO THE KOMAN CATHOLICS OF COKK. 585 

the other kneels to you for peace." This hostihty of her sects 
has been the disgrace, the pecuHar disgrace of Christianity. 
The Gentoo loves his caste ; so does the Mahometan ; so does 
the Hindoo, whom England, out of the abundance of her 
charity, is about to teach her creed ; — I hope she may not 
teach her practice. But Christianity — Christianity alone, ex- 
hibits her thousand sects, each denouncing his neighbor here, 
in the name of God ; and damning hereafter, out of pure de- 
votion ! " You're a heretic," says the Catholic : " You're a Pa- 
pist," says the Protestant. " I appeal to Saint Peter," exclaims 
the Catholic : " I appeal to Saint Athanasius," cries the Pro- 
testant : " and if it goes to damning, he's as good at it as any 
saint in the calendar." "You'll all be damned eternally," 
m(»ans out the Methodist ; " I'm the elect !" 

Thus it is, you see, each has his anathema, his accusation, 
and his retort ; and in the end Beligion is the victim ! The 
victory of each is the overthrow of all ; and Infidelity, laugh- 
ing at the contest, writes the refutation of their creed in the 
blood of the combatants ! I wonder if this reflection has ever 
struck any of those reverend dignitaries who rear their mitres 
against Catholic emancipation. Has it ever glanced across 
their Christian zeal, if the story of our country should have 
casually reached the valleys of Hindostan, with what an argu- 
ment they are furnishing the heathen world against their sacred 
missionary ? In what terms could the Christian ecclesiastic 
answer the Eastern Brahmin, when he replied to his exhorta- 
tions in language such as this ? 

"Father, we have heard your doctrine; it is splendid in theory, spe- 
cious in promise, subhme in prospect ; like the world to which it leads, it 
is rich in the miracles of light. But, Father, we have heard that there 
are times when its rays vanish and leave your sphere in darkness, or when 
your only lustre arises from meteors of lire, and moons of blood; we have 
heard of the verdant island which the Great Spirit has raised in the bo- 
som of the waters with such a bloom of beauty, that the very wave she 
has usurped, worships the loveliness of her intrusion. The sovereign of 
our forests is not more generous in his anger than her sons; the snow- 
flake, ere it falls on the mountain, is not purer than her daughters; little 
inland seas reflect the splendors of her landscape, and her valleys smile 
at the story of the serpent ! Father, is it true, that this isle of the sun, 
this people of the morning, find the fury of the ocean in your creed, and 



580 CHAELES PHILLIPS, ESQ. 

more than the venom of the viper in your poHcy! Is it true, that for bIk 
hundred years her peasant has not tasted peace, nor her piety rested from 
persecution? Oh, Brahma! defend us from the God of the Christian ! 
Father, father, return to your brethren, retrace the waters; we may hve 
in ignorance, but we hve in love; and we will not taste the tree that gives 
us evil when it gives us wisdom. The heart is our guide, nature is our 
gospel; in the imitation of our fathers we found our hope; and, if we err, 
on the virtue of our motives we rely for our redemption." 

How would tlie missionaries of the mitre answer Mm ? How 
will they answer that insulted Being of whose creed their con- 
duct carries the refutation ? 

But to what end do I argue with the Bigot?- — a wretch, 
whom no philosophy can humanize, no charity soften, no re- 
ligion reclaim, no miracle convert : a monster, who, red with 
the fires of hell, and bending under the crimes of earth, erects 
his murderous divinity upon a throne of skulls, and would glad- 
ly feed, even with a brother's blood, the cannibal appetite of 
his rejected altar ! His very interest cannot soften him into 
humanity. Surely, if it could, no man would be found mad 
enough to advocate a system which cankers the very heart of 
society, and undermines the natural resources of government ; 
which takes away the strongest excitement to industry, by 
closing up every avenue to laudable ambition ; which adminis- 
ters to the vanity or the vice of a party when it should only 
study the advantage of a people ; and holds out the perquisites 
of state as an impious bounty on the persecution of religion. 

I have already shown that the power of the Pope, that the 
power of France, and that the tenets of your creed, were but 
imaginary auxiharies to this system. Another pretended ob- 
stacle has, however, been opposed to your emancipation. I 
allude to the danger arising from a foreign influence. What 
a triumphant answer can you give to that! Methiuks, as 
lately, I see the assemblage of your hallowed hierarchy, sm'- 
rounded by the priesthood, and followed by the people, wav- 
ing aloft the crucifix of Christ alike against the seductions of 
the court, and the commands of the conclave ! Was it not a 
delightful, a heart-cheering spectacle, to see that holy band of 
brothers preferring the chance of martyrdom to the certainty 
of promotion, and postponing all the gratifications of worldly 



i 



TO THE EOMAN CATHOLICS OP COEK. 587 

pride, to the severe but lieaven-gaining glories of tlieir poverty ? 
Tliey acted honestly, and they acted wisely also ; for I say 
here, before the largest assembly I ever saw in any country — 
and I beUeve you are almost all Catholics — I say here, that if 
the See of Eome presumed to impose any temporal mandate 
directly or indirectly on the Irish people, the Irish bishops 
should at once abandon it ; or the flocks, one and all, would 
abjure and banish them both together. 

History affords us too fatal an example of the perfidious, 
arrogant, and venal interference of a papal usurper of former 
days, in the temporal jurisdiction of this country ; an inter- 
ference assumed without right, exercised without principle, and 
followed by calamities apparently without end. Thus, then, 
has every obstacle vanished ; but it has done more — every ob- 
stacle has, as it were, by miracle, produced a powerful argu- 
ment in your favor. How do I prove it ? Follow me in my 
proofs, and you will see by what links the chain is united. 
The power of Napoleon was the grand and leading obstacle 
to your emancipation. That power led him to the menace of 
an Irish invasion. What did that prove ? Only the sincerity 
of Irish allegiance. On the very threat, we poured forth our 
volunteers, our yeomen, and our militia ; and the country be- 
came encircled with an armed and a loyal population. Thus 
then the calumny of your disaffection vanished. That power 
next led him to the invasion of Portugal. What did it prove ? 
Only the good faith of Catholic allegiance. Every field in the 
Peninsula saw the Catholic Portuguese hail the English Pro- 
testant as a brother and a friend, joined in the same pride and 
the same peril. Thus, then, vanished the slander, that you 
could not keep faith with heretics. That power next led him 
to the imprisonment of the Pontiff, so long suspected of being 
quite ready to sacrifice everything to his interest and his 
dominion. What did that prove ? The strength of his prin- 
ciples, the purity of his faith, the disinterestedness of his 
practice. It proved a life spent in the study of the saints, and 
ready to be closed by an imitation of the martyrs. Thus, 
also, was the head of your religion vindicated to Europe. 
There remained behind but ono impediment — ^your habihty to 
a foreign influence. Now mark ! 



588 CHAELES PHILLIPS, ESQ. 

The Pontiff's captivity led to the transmission of Quaran- 
totti's rescript ; and, on its arrival, from the priest to the peas- 
ant, there was not a Catholic in the land, who did not spurn 
the document of Italian audacity ! Thus, then, vanished also 
the phantom of a foreign influence ! Is this conviction ? Is 
not the hand of God in it ? Oh yes ! for observe what fol- 
lowed. The very moment that power, which was the first and 
last leading argument against you, had, by its special opera- 
tion, banished every obstacle ; that power itself, as it were by 
enchantment, evaporated at once ; and peace with Europe took 
away the last pretence for exclusion. Peace with Euroj)e ! 
alas, alas, there is no peace for Ireland ; the universal pacifica- 
tion was but the signal for renewed hostility to us ; and the 
mockery of its preliminaries was tolled through our provinces 
by the knell of the curfew. I ask, is it not time that this hos- 
tiUty should cease ? If ever there was a day when it was 
necessary, that day undoubtedly exists no longer. The conti- 
nent is triumphant, the Peninsula is free, France is our ally. 
The hapless house which gave birth to Jacobinism is extinct 
forever. The Pope has been found not only not hostile, but 
complying. Indeed, if England would recollect the share you 
had in these sublime events, the very recollection should sub- 
sidize her into gratitude. But should she not — should she, 
with a baseness monstrous and unparalleled, forget our ser- 
vices, she has still to study a tremendous lesson. 

The ancient order of Europe, it is true, is restored, but what 
restored it ? Coalition after coalition had crumbled away be- 
fore the might of the conqueror ; crowns were but ephemeral ; 
monarchs only the tenants of an hour; the descendant of 
Frederick dwindled into a vassal ; the heir of Peter shrunk 
into the recesses of his frozen desert ; the successor of Charles 
roamed a vagabond, not only throneless but houseless ; every 
evening sun set upon a change ; every morning dawned upon 
some new convulsion ; in short, the whole political globe 
quivered as with an earthquake ; and who could teU what 
venerable monument was next to shiver beneath the splendid, 
frightful, and reposeless heavings of the French volcano ? 
What gave Europe peace, and England safety, amid this palsy 
of her princes ? Was it not the Landwehr and the Landsturm 



TO THE EOMAN CATHOLICS OF COEK. 589 

and the Levy en Masse ? "Was it not the People ? — that first 
and last, and best and noblest, as well as safest security of a 
virtuous government. It is a glorious lesson ; she ought to 
study it in this hour of safety : but should she not : 

" Oh, wo be to the prince who rules by fears, 
"When danger comes upon him ! " 

She will adopt it. I hope it from her wisdom ; I expect it 
from her policy ; I claim it from her justice ; I demand it from 
her gratitude. She must at length see that there is a gross 
mistake in the management of Ireland. No wise man ever yet 
imagined injustice to be his interest ; and the minister who 
thinks he serves a state by upholding the most irritating and 
the most impious of all monopolies, will one day or other find 
himself miserably mistaken. This system of persecution is not 
the way to govern this country ; at least to govern it with any 
happiness to itself, or advantage to its rulers. Centuries have 
proved its total inefiiciency ; and if it be continued for centu- 
ries, the proofs will be but multiplied. Why, however, should 
I blame the English people, when I see our own representa- 
tives so shamefully negligent of our interest ? The other day, 
for instance, when Mr. Peele introduced, aye, and passed too, 
his three newly invented penal bills, to the necessity of which 
every assizes in Ireland, and as honest a judge as ever digni- 
fied or redeemed the ermine, has given the refutation ; why 
was it that no Irish member rose in his place to vindicate his 
country ? Where were the nominal representatives of Ireland ? 
Where were the renegade revilers of the demagogue ? Where 
were the noisy proclaimers of the Board ? What, was there 
not one voice to own the country '? Was the patriot of 1782 
an assenting auditor ? Were cur hundred itinerants mute and 
motionless — ■" quite chop-fallen ?" or is it only when Ireland is 
slandered, and her motives misrepresented, and her oppres- 
sions are basely and falsely denied, that their venal throats 
are ready to echo the chorus of ministerial calumny ? 

Oh, I should not have to ask those questions, if in the late 
contest for this city you had prevailed, and sent Hutchinson 
into parhament ; he would have risen, though alone, as I have 
oftsn seen him — richer not less in hereditary fame, than in 



690 CHAELES PHILIPS ESQ. 

personal accomplishments ; tlie ornament of Ireland as she is 
the solitary remnant of what she was. If slander dare asperse 
her, it would not have done so with impunity. He would 
have encouraged the timid ; he would have shamed the recre- 
ant ; and though he could not save us from chains, he would 
at least have shielded us from calumny. Let me hope that his 
absence shall be but of short duration, and that this city will 
earn an additional claim to the gratitude of the country, by 
electing him her representative. I scarcely know him but as a 
public man ; and considering the state to which we are reduced 
by the apostasy of some, and the ingratitude of others, and 
venality of more, — I say you should inscribe the conduct of 
such a man in the manuals of your devotion, and in the prim- 
ers of your children ; but above all, you should act on it your- 
selves. 

Let me entreat of you, above all things, to sacrifice any per- 
sonal differences among yourselves, for the great cause in 
which you are embarked. Remember the contest is for your 
children, your country, and your God ; and remember, also, 
that the day of Irish union will be the natal day of Bish liber- 
ty. When your own Parliament (which I trust in heaven we 
may yet see again) voted you the right of franchise, and the 
right of purchase, it gave you, if you are not false to your- 
selves, a certainty of your emancipation. My friends, farewell ! 
This has been a most unexpected meeting to me ; it has been 
our first — it may be our last. I can never forget the enthusi- 
asm of this reception. I am too much affected by it to make 
professions ; but, believe me, no matter where I may be driven 
by the whim of my destiny, you shall find me one in whom 
change of place shall create no change of principle ; one whose 
memory must perish ere he forgets his country ; whose heart 
must be cold when it beats not for her happiness. 



SPEECH OF CHAELES PHILLIPS, ESQ, AT A 
MEETING OF THE ROMAN CATHOLICS OF THE 
COUNTY AND CITY OF DUBLIN. 



Having taken, in the discussions on jour question, such 
humble share as was allotted to my station and capacity, I 
may be permitted to offer my ardent congratulations at the 
proud pinnacle on which it this day reposes. After having 
' combated calumnies the most atrocious, sophistries the most 
plausible, and perils the most appalling, that slander could 
invent, or ingenuity devise, or power array against you, I at 
length behold the assembled rank and wealth and talent of the 
Catholic body offering to the legislature that appeal which 
cannot be rejected, if there be a Power in heaven to redress in- 
jury, or a spirit on earth to administer justice. No matter what 
may be the depreciations of faction or of bigotry ; this earth 
never presented a more ennobling spectacle than that ot a 
Christian country suffering for her religion, with the patience 
of a martyr, and suing for her liberties with the expostula- 
tions of a philosopher ; reclaiming the bad by her piety ; re- 
futing the bigoted by her practice ; wielding the Apostle's 
weapons in the patriot's cause, and at length, laden with 
chains and with laurels, seeking from the country she had 
saved, the constitution she had shielded ! Little did I imagine, 
that in such a state of your cause, we should be called to- 
gether to counteract the impediments to its success, created 
not by its enemies, but by those supposed to be its friends. 
It is a melancholy occasion ; but, melancholy as it is, it must 
be met, and met with the fortitude of men struggling in the 
sacred cause of liberty. I do not allude to the proclamation 
of your Board ; of that Board I never was a member, so I can 
speak impartially. It contained much talent, some learning, 
many virtues. It was valuable on that account; but it was 
doubly valuable as being a vehicle for the individual senti- 



592 CHAELES PHILLIPS, ESQ. 

ments of any Catholic, and for the aggregate sentiments of 
every Cathohc. Those who seceded from it, do not remem- 
ber that, individually, they are nothing ; that as a body, they 
are everything. It is not this wealthy slave, or that titled 
sycoj)hant, v\^hom the bigots dread, or the parliament respects. 
No, it is the body, the numbers, the rank, the property, the 
genius, the perseverance, the education, but, above all, the 
Union of the Catholics. I am far from defending every mea- 
sure of the Board — perhaps I condemn some of its measures 
even more than those who have seceded from it ; but is it a 
reason, if a general makes one mistake, that his followers are 
to desert him, especially when the contest is for all that is 
dear or valuable ? No doubt the Board had its errors. Show 
me the human institution wliich has not. Let the man, then, 
who denounces it, 'prove himself superior to humanity, before 
he triumphs in his accusation. I am sorry for its suppres- 
sion. When I consider the animals who are in office around 
us, the act does not surprise me ; . but I confess,, even from 
them, the manner did, and the time chosen did, most sensibly. 
I did not expect it, on the very hour when the news- of univer- 
sal peace was first promulgated, and on the anniversary of the 
only British monarch's birth, who ever gave a boon to this 
distracted country. 

You will excuse this digression, rendered in some degree ne- 
cessary. I shall now confine myself exclusively to your reso- 
lution, which determines on the immediate presentation of 
your petition, and censures the neglect of any discussion on it 
by your advocates during the last session of parliament. You 
have a right to demand most fully the reasons of any man who 
dissents from Mr. Grattan. I will give you mine explicitly. 
But I shall first state the reasons which he has given for the 
postponement of your question. I shall do so out of respect 
to him, if indeed it can be called respect to quote those senti- 
ments, which on their very mention must excite your ridicule. 
Mr. Grattan presented yom" petition, and, on moving that it 
should lie Avhere so many preceding ones have lain, namely, on 
the table, he declared it to be his intention to move for no dis- 
cussion. Here, in the first place, I think Mr. Grattan 
wrong ; he got that petition, if not on the express, at least on 



SPEECH AT DUBLIN. 593 

tile implied condition of having it immediately discussed. 
There was not a man at the aggregate meeting at which it was 
adopted, who did not expect a discussion on the very first op- 
portunity. Mr. Grattan, however, was angry at " sugges- 
tions." I do not think Mr. Grattan, of all men, had any right 
to be so angry at receiving that which every English member 
was willing to receive, and was actually receiving from any 
Enghsh corn-factor. Mr. Grattan was also angry at our " vio- 
lence." Neither do I think he had any occasion to be so 
squeamish at what he calls our violence. 

There was a day, when Mr. Grattan would not have spurned 
our suggestions, and there was also a day when he was fifty- 
fold more intemperate than any of his oppressed countrymen, 
whom he now holds up to the English people as so unconstitu- 
tionally violent. A pretty way, forsooth, for your advocate to 
commence conciliating a foreign auditory in favor of your pe- 
tition. Mr. Grattan, however, has fulfilled his own prophecy, 
that "an oak of the forest is too old to be transplanted at 
fifty," and our fears that an Irish native would soon lose its 
raciness in an Enghsh atmosphere. " It is not my intention," 
says he, "to move for a discussion at present." Why? 
" Great obstacles have been removed." That's his first rea- 
son. " I am, however," says he, " still ardent." Ardent ! 
Why it strikes me to be a very novel kind of ardor, which toils 
till it has removed every impediment, and then pauses at the 
prospect of its victory! "And I am of opinion," he contin- 
ues, " that any immediate discussion would be the height of 
precipitation :" that is, after having removed the impediments, 
he pauses in his path, declaring he is " ardent :" and after 
centuries of suffering, when you press for a discussion, he pro- 
tests that he considers you monstrously precipitate ! 

Now is not that a fair translation ? Why, really, if we did 
not know Mr. Grattan, we should be almost tempted to think 
that he was quoting from th^ ministry. With the exception of 
one or two plain, downright, sturdy, unblushing bigots, who 
opposed you because you were Christians, and declared they 
did so, this was the cant of every man who affected hberahty. 
"Oh, I declare," they say, "they may not be cannibals, 
though they are Cathohcs ; and I would be very glad to vote 



594: CHAKLES PHILLIPS, ESQ. 

for tliem, but this is no time." " Oh no," says Braggo Ba- 
thurst, " it's no time. What ! in time of war ! Why it looks 
hke bullying us !" Very well : next comes the peace, and 
what say our friends the opposition ? " Oh ! I declare peace 
is no time, it looks so like persuading us." For my part, 
serious as the subject is, it affects me with the very same ridi- 
cule with which I see I have so unconsciously affected you. 
I will tell you a story of which it reminds me. It is told of 
the celebrated Charles Fox. Far be it from me, however, to 
mention that name with levity. As he was a great man, I 
revere him ; as he was a good man, I love him. He had as 
wise a head as ever paused to deliberate ; he had as sweet a 
tongue as ever gave the words of ' wisdom utterance ; and he 
had a heart so stamped with the immediate impress of the Di- 
vinity, that its very errors might be traced to the excess of its 
benevolence. I had almost forgot the story. Fox was a man 
of genius — of course he was poor. Poverty is a reproach to 
no man ; to such a man as Fox, I think it was a pride : for if 
he chose to traffic with his principles; if he chose to gamole 
with his conscience, how easily might he have been rich ? I 
guessed your answer. 

It would be hard, indeed, if you did not believe that in Eng- 
land talents might find a purchaser, who have seen in Ireland 
how easily a blockhead may swindle himself into preferment. 
Juvenal says the greatest misfortune attendant on poverty is 
ridicule. Fox found out a greater — debt. The Jews called on 
him for payment. "Ah, my dear friends," says Fox, "I ad- 
mit the principle ; I owe you money, but what time is this, 
when I am going upon business." Just so our friends admit 
the principle ; they owe you emancipation, but war's no time. 
Well, the Jews departed just as you did. They returned to the 
charge ; " What ! (cries Fox,) is this a time, when I am en- 
gaged on an appointment ? " What ! say our friends, is this a 
time when all the world's at peace ? The Jews departed ; but 
the end of it was. Fox, with his secretary, Mr. Hare, who was 
as much in debt as he was, shut themselves up in garrison. 
The Jews used to surround his habitation at dayHght, and 
poor Fox regularly put his head out of the window, with this 
question, " Gentlemen, are you i^ox-hunting or ZZare-hunting 



SPEECH AT DUBLIN. 595 

tliis morning?" His pleasantry mitigated the very Jews. 
" Well, well, Fox, now you have always admitted the principle, 
but protested against the time — we will give you your own time, 
only just fix some final day for our re-paymcnt." — "Ah, my 
dear Moses," replies Fox, "now this is friendly. I wiU take 
you at your word ; I will fix a day, and as it's to be a Jinal 
day, what would you think of the day of judgment ? " — " That 
will be too busy a day with us." — " Well, well, in order to 
accommodate all parties, let us settle the day after." 

Thus it is, between the war inexpediency of Bragge Bathurst, 
and the peace inexpediency of Mr. Grattan, you may expect 
your Emancipation Bill pretty much about the time that Fox 
settled for the payment of his creditors. Mr. Grattan, how- 
ever, though he scorned to take your suggestions, took the sug- 
gestions of your friends. " I have consulted," says he, " my 
right honorable friends ! " Oh, all friends, all right honorable ! 
Now this it is to trust the interest of a people into the hands 
of a party. You must know, in parliamentary parlance, these 
right honorable friends mean a party. There are few men so 
contemptible, as not to have a party. The minister has his 
party. The opposition have their party. The saints, for there 
are saints in the House of Commons, lucics a non lucendo, the 
saints have their party. Every one has his party. I had for- 
gotten — 'Ireland has no party. Such are the reasons, if rea- 
sons they can be called, which Mr. Grattan has given for the 
postponement of your question ; and I sincerely say, if they 
had come from any other man, I would not have condescended 
to have given them an answer. He is indeed reported to have 
said that he has others in reserve, which he did not think it 
necessary to detail. If those which he reserved were like those 
he delivered, I do not dispute the prudence of keeping them 
to himself ; but as we have not the gift of prophecy, it is not 
easy for us to answer them, until he shall deign to give them 
to his constituents. 

Having dealt thus freely with the alleged reasons for the 
postponement, it is quite natural that you should require what 
my reasons are for urging the discussion. I shall give them 
candidly. They are at once so simple and explicit, it is quite 
impossible that the meanest capacity amongst you should not 



596 CHAELES PHILLIPS, ESQ. 

comprehend them. I would urge tlie instant discussion, be- 
cause discussion has always been of use to you ; because, upon 
every discussion you have gained converts out of doors ; and 
because, upon every discussion within the doors of parliament, 
your enemies have diminished, and your friends have increased. 
Now, is not that a strong reason for continuing your discus- 
sions ? This may be assertion. Aye, but I will prove it. In 
order to convince you of the argument as referring to the 
country, I need but point to the state of the public mind now 
upon the subject, and that which existed in the memory of the 
youngest. I myself remember the blackest and the basest 
universal denunciations against your creed, and the vilest 
anathemas against any man who would grant you an iota. 
Now, every man affects to be Hberal, and the only question 
with some, is the time of the concession ; with others, the ex- 
tent of the concessions ; with many, the nature of the securities 
you should afford; whilst a great multitude, in which I am 
proud to class myself, think that your Emancipation should 
be immediate, universal, and unrestricted. Such has been the 
progress of the human mind out of doors, in consequence of the 
powerful eloquence, argument, and policy elicited by those 
discussions which your friends now have, for the first time, 
found out to be precipitate. 

Now let us see what has been the effect produced within the 
doors of parhament. For twenty years you were silent, and of 
course you were neglected. The consequence was most nat- 
ural. Why should j)arliament grant privileges to men who did 
not think those privileges wOrth the solicitation ? Then rose 
your agitators, as they are called by those bigots who are 
trembling at the effect of their arguments on the community, 
and who, as a matter of course, take every opportunity of ca- 
lumniating them. Ever since that period your cause has been 
advancing. Take the numerical proportions in the House of 
Commons on each subsequent discussion. In 1805, the first 
time it was brought forward in the Imperial legislature, and 
it was then aided by the powerful eloquence of Fox, there was 
a majority against even taking your claims into consideration, 
of no less a number than 212. It was an appalling omen. In 
1808, however, on the next discussion, that majority was di- 



SPEECH AT DUBLIN. 597 

minislied to 163. Li 1810 it decreased to 104. lu 1811 it 
dwindled to 64, and at length, in 1812, on the motion of Mr. 
Canning — and it is not a little remarkable that the first suc- 
cessful exertion in your favor was made by an English mem- 
ber — yoiu' enemies fled the field, and you had the triumphant 
majority to support you, of 129 ! Now, is this not demonstra- 
tion? 

"What becomes now of those who say discussion has not 
been of use to you : but I need not have resorted to arithme- 
tical calculation. Men become ashamed of combating with 
axioms. Truth is omnipotent, and must prevail ; it forces its 
way with the fire and the precision of the morning sunbeam. 
Vapors may impede the infancy of its progress ; but the very 
resistance that would check only condenses and concentrates 
it, until at length it goes forth in the fullness of its meridian, 
all life and light and lustre, the nainutest objects visible in its 
refulgence. You lived for centuries on the vegetable diet and 
eloquent silence of this Pythagorean policy ; and the conse- 
quence was, when you thought yourselves mightily dignified, 
and mightily interesting, the whole world was laughing at your 
philosophy and sending its ahens to take possession of your 
birthright. I have given you a good reason for urging your 
discussion, by having shown you that discussion has always 
gained you proselytes. 

But is it the time? says Mr. Grattan. Yes, sir, it is the 
time, pecuharly the time, unless indeed the great question of 
Irish liberty is to be reserved as a weapon in the hands of a 
party to wield against the weakness of the British minister. 
But why should I delude you, talking about time ! Oh ! there 
will never be a time with Bigotey! She has no head, and 
cannot think ; she has no heart, and cannot feel ; when she 
moves, it is in wrath ; when she pauses, it is amid ruin ; her 
prayers are curses, her communion is death, her vengeance is 
eternity, her decalogue is written in the blood of her victims ; 
and if she stoops for a moment from her infernal flight, it is 
upon some kindred rock to whet her vulture fang for keener 
rapine, and replume her wing for a more sanguinary desola- 
tion ! I appeal from this infernal, grave-stalled fury. I appeal 
to the good sense, to the pohc'y, to the gratitude of England ; 



598 CHAELES PHILLIPS, ESQ. 

and make my appeal peculiarly at this moment, when all the 
illustrious potentates of Europe are assembled together in the 
British capital, to hold the great festival of universal peace 
and universal emancipation. 

Perhaps when France, flushed with success, fired by ambi- 
tion, and infuriated by enmity ; her avowed aim an univer- 
sal conquest, her means the confederated resources of the Con- 
tinent, her guide the greatest military genius a nation fertile 
in prodigies has produced — a man who seemed born to invert 
what had been regular, to defile what had been venerable, to 
crush what had been established, and to create, as if by a 
magic impulse, a fairy world, peopled by the paupers he had 
commanded into kings, and based by the thrones he had 
crumbled in his caprices — ^perhaps when such a power, so led, 
so organized, and so incited, was in its noon of triumph, the 
timid might tremble even at the charge that would save, or 
the concession that would strengthen — But now, — ^her allies 
faithless, her conquests despoiled, her territory dismembered, 
her legions defeated, her leader dethroned, and her reigning 
prince our ally by treaty, our debtor by gratitude, and our 
inalienable friend by every solemn obligation of civilized soci- 
ety, — ^the objection is our strength, and the obstacle our bat- 
tlement. Perhaps when the Pope was in the power of our 
enemy, however slender the pretext, bigotry might have rest- 
ed on it. The inference was false as to Ireland, and it was 
ungenerous as to Kome. 

The Irish Catholic, firm in his faith, bows to the Pontiff's 
spiritual supremacy, bu.t he would spurn the Pontiff's tem- 
poral interference. If, with the spirit of an earthly domina- 
tion, he were to issue to-morrow his despotic mandate. Catholic 
Ireland with one voice would answer him : " Sire, we bow with 
reverence to your spiritual mission ; the descendant of Saint 
Peter, we freely acknowledge you the head of our Church, and 
the organ of our creed ; but. Sire, if we have a Church, we 
cannot forget that we also have a country ; and when you at- 
tempt to convert your mitre into a crown, and your crozier 
into a sceptre, you degrade the majesty of your high delega- 
tion, and grossly miscalculate upon our acquiescence. No 
foreign power shall regulate the allegiance which we owe to 



SPEECH AT DUBLIN. 599 

our sovereign ; it was the fault of our fathers that one Pope 
forged our fetters ; it will be our own, if we allow them to be 
riveted by another." Such would be the answer of universal 
Ireland ; such was her answer to the audacious menial, who 
dared to dictate her unconditional submission to an act of 
parliament which emancipated by penalties, and redressed by 
insult. But, sir, it never would have entered into the contem- 
plation of the Pope, to have assumed such an authority. His 
character was a sui3S,cient shield against the imputation, and 
his policy must have taught him, that, in grasping at the 
shadow of a temporal power, he would but risk the reality of 
of his ecclesiastical supremacy. 

Thus was parliament doubly guarded against a foreign 
usurpation. The people upon whom it was to act deprecate its 
authority, and the power to which it was imputed abhors its 
ambition ; the Pope would not exert it if he could, and the 
people would not obey it if he did. Just precisely upon the 
same foundation rested the aspersions which were cast upon 
your creed. How did experience justify them ? Did Lord 
Welhngton find that religious faith made any difference amid 
the thunder of the battle ? Did the Spanish soldier desert his 
colors because his General believed not in the real presence ? 
Did the brave Portuguese neglect his orders to negotiate 
about mysteries ? Or what comparison did the hero draw be- 
tween the policy of England and the piety of Spain, when at 
one moment he led the heterodox legions to victory, and the 
very next was obliged to fly from his own native flag, waving 
defiance on the walls of Burgos, where the Irish exile planted 
and sustained it ? What must he have felt when in a foreign 
land he was obliged to command brother against brother, to 
raise the sword of blood, and drown the cries of nature Avith 
the artillery of death ? What were the sensations of our hap- 
less exiles, when they recognized the features of their long-lost 
country? when they heard the accents of the tongue they 
loved, or caught the cadence of the simple melody which once 
lulled them to sleep within a mother's arms, and cheered the 
darling circle they must behold no more ? 

Alas, how the poor banished heart delights in the memory 
that song associates ! He heard it in happier days, when the 



600 CHAKLES PHILLIPS, ESQ. 

parents lie adored, tlie maid lie loved, the friends of his soul, 
and the green fields of his infancy were round him ; when his 
labors were illumined with the sunshine of the heart, and his 
humble hut was a palace — for it was home. His soul is full, 
his eye suffused, he bends from the battlements to catch the 
cadence, when his death-shot, sped by a brother's hand, 
lays him in his grave — the victim of a code calling itself 
Christian ! 

Who shall say, heart-rending as it is, this picture is from 
fancy ? Has it not occurred in Spain ? May it not, at this 
instant, be acting in America ? Is there any country in the 
universe in which these brave exiles of a barbarous bigotry 
are not to be found refuting the calumnies that banished and 
rewarding the hospitahty that received them ? Yet England, 
enlightened England, who sees them in every field of the old 
world and the new, defending the various flags of every faith, 
supports the injustice of her exclusive constitution, by branding 
upon them the ungenerous accusation of an exclusive creed ! 
England, the ally of Catholic Portugal, the ally of Cathohc Spain, 
the ally of Catholic France, the friend of the Pope ! England, 
who seated a Cathohc bigot in Madrid! who convoyed a 
Cathohc Braganza to the Brazils I who enthroned a Catholic 
Bourbon in Paris ! who guaranteed a Catholic estabhshment 
in Canada ! who gave a constitution to Catholic Hanover ! 
England, who searches the globe for Cathohc gTievances to 
redress, and Catholic Princes to restore, will not trust the 
Catholic at home, who spends his blood and treasure in her 
service ! Is this generous ? Is this consistent ? Is it just ? 
Is it even politic ? Is it the act of a wise country to fetter the 
energies of an entire population ? Is it the act of a Christian 
country to do it in the name of God ? Is it pohtic in a gov- 
ernment to degrade part of the body by which it is supported, 
or pious to make Providence a party to their degradation ? 
There are societies in England for discountenancing vice ; there 
are Christian associations for distributing the Bible ; there are 
voluntary missions for converting the heathen ; but Ireland, 
the seat of their government, the stay of their empire, their 
associate by all the ties of nature and of interest, how has she 
benefited by the gospel of which they boast ? Has the sweet 



SPEECH AT DUBLIN. 601 

spirit of Christianity appeared on our plains in the character 
of her precepts, breathing the air and robed in the beauties of 
the world to which she would lead us ; with no argument but 
love, no look but peace, no wealth but piety ; her creed com- 
prehensive as the arch of heaven, and her charities bounded 
but by the circle of creation? Or, has she been let loose 
amongst us, in form of fury, and in act of demon, her heart 
festered with the fires of hell, her hands clotted with the gore 
of earth, withering alike in her repose and in her progress, her 
path apparent by the print of blood, and her pause denoted 
by the expanse of desolation ? Gospel of Heaven ! is this 
thy heraldry ? God of the universe ! is this thy handmaid ? 
Christian of the ascendency! how would you answer the dis- 
believing infidel, if he asked you, should he estimate the 
Christian doctrine by the Christian practice ; if he dwelt upon 
those periods when the human victim writhed upon the altar 
of the peaceful Jesus, and the cross, crimsoned with his blood, 
became little better than a stake to the sacrifice of his vota- 
ries ; if he pointed to Ireland, where the word of peace was 
the war-whoop of destruction ; where the son was bribed 
against the father, and the plunder of the parent's property 
was made a bounty on the recantation of the parent's creed ; 
where the march of the human mind was stayed in his name 
who had inspired it with reason, and any effort to hberate a 
feUow-creature from his intellectual bondage was sure to be 
recompensed by the dungeon or the scaffold ; where ignorance 
was so long a legislative command, and piety legislative 
crime ; where religion was placed as a barrier between the 
sexes, and the intercourse of nature was pronounced felony by 
law ; where God's worship was an act of stealth, and his min- 
isters sought amongst the savages of the woods that sanctuary 
which a nominal civilization had denied them ; where at this 
instant conscience is made to blast every hope of genius, and 
every energy of ambition ; and the Catholic who would rise to 
any station of trust, must, in the face of his country, deny the 
faith of his fathers ; where the preferments of earth are only 
to be obtained by the forfeiture of Heaven ? 

" Unprized are lier sons till they learn to betray, 
Undistinguisli'd they live if they shame not their sires ; 



602 CHARLES PHILLIPS. 

And the torcli that would light them to dignity's way, 
Must be caught from the pile where their country expires ! " 

How, let me ask, liow would tlie Christian zealot droop be- 
neath this catalogue of Christian qualifications ? But, thus it 
is, when sectarians differ on account of mysteries : in the heat 
and acrimony of the causeless contest, religion, the glory of one 
world, and the guide of another, drifts from the splendid circle in 
which she shone, in the comet-maze of uncertainty and er- 
ror. The code, against which you petition, is a vile compound 
of impiety and imjDolicy : impiety, because it debases in the 
name of God : impolicy, because it disquahfies under pretence 
of government. If we are to argue from the services of Protes- 
tant Ireland, to the losses sustained by the bondage of Catholic 
Ireland, and I do not see why we should not, the state 
which continues such a system is guilty of little less than a 
political suicide. 

It matters little where the Protestant Irishman has been em- 
ployed ; whether with Burke, wielding the senate with his elo- 
quence ; with Castlereagh, guiding the cabinet with his coun- 
sels ; with Barry, enriching the arts by his pencil ; with Swift, 
adorning literature by his genius ; with Goldsmith or with 
Moore, softening the heart by their melody ; or with Welling- 
ton, chaining victory at his car, he may boldy challenge the 
competition of the world. Oppressed and impoverished as 
our country is, every muse has cheered, every art adorned, and 
every conquest crowned her. Plundered, she was not poor, 
for her character enriched; attainted, she was not titleless, for 
her services ennobled; literally outlawed into eminence, and 
fettered into fame, the fields of her exile were immortalized by 
her deeds, and the links of her chain became decorated by her 
laurels. Is this fancy, or is it fact ? Is there a department in 
the state in which Irish genius does not possess a predomi- 
nance? Is there a conquest which it does not achieve, or a 
dignity which it does not adorn? At this instant, is there a 
country in the world to which England has not deputed an 
Irishman as her representative? She has sent Lord Moira to 
India, Sir Gore Ousely to Ispahan, Lord Stuart to Yienna, 
Lord Castlereagh to Congress, Sir Henry Wellesly to Mad- 
rid, Mr. Canning to Lisbon, Lord Strangford to the Brazils, 



SPEECH AT DUBLIN. G03 

Lord Clancarty to Holland, Lord Wellington to Paris — all 
Irishmen! Whether it results from accident or from merit, 
can there be a more cutting sarcasm on the policy of Eng- 
land! Is it not directly saying to her, "here is a country from 
one fifth of whose people you depute the agents of your most 
august delegations, the remaining four fifths of which, by your 
odious bigotry, you incapacitate from any station of office or 
of trust!" It is adding all that is weak in impolicy to all that 
is wicked in ingratitude. What is her apology? Will she 
pretend that the Deity imitates her injustice, and incapaci- 
tates the intellect as she has done the creed? After making 
Providence a pretence for her code, will she also make it a 
party to her crime, and arraign the universal spirit of partial- 
ity in his dispensations? Is she not content with. Him as a 
Protestant God, unless He also consents to become a Catho- 
lic demon? But, if the charge were true; if the Irish Catho- 
lic were imbruted and debased, Ireland's conviction would be 
England's crime, and your answer to the bigot's charge should 
be the bigot's conduct. What, then! is this the result of sis 
centuries of your government? Is this the connection which 
you called a benefit to Ireland? Have your protecting laws so 
debased them, that the very privilege of reason is worthless in 
their possession? Shame! oh, shame! to the government 
where the people are barbarous? The day is not distant when 
they made the education of a Catholic a crime ; and yet they 
arraign the CathoHc for ignorance! The day is not distant 
when they proclaimed the celebration of the Catholic worsliip 
a felony, and yet they complain that the Catholic is not 
moral ! What folly ! Is it to be expected that the people are 
to emerge in a moment from the stupor of a protracted degra- 
dation? 

There is not perhaps to be traced upon the map of national 
misfortune, a spot so truly and so tediously deplorable as Ire- 
land. Other lands, no doubt, have had their calamities. To 
the horrors of revolution, the miseries of despotism, the 
scourges of anarchy, they have in their turns been subject. 
But it has been only in their turns ; the visitations of woe, 
though severe, have not been eternal ; the hour of probation, 
or of punishment, has passed away; and the tempest, after 



604: CHAELES PHILLIPS. 

liaving emptied the vial of its wrath, has given place to the 
serenity of the calm and of the sunshine. Has this been the 
case mth respect to our miserable country ? Is there, save in 
the visionary world of tradition — is there in the progress, 
either of record or recollection, one verdant spot in the desert 
of our annals, where patriotism can find repose, or philan- 
thropy refreshment ? Oh, indeed, posterity wiU pause with 
wonder on the melancholy page which shall portray the story 
of the people amongst whom the policy of man has waged an 
eternal warfare with the providence of God, blighting into de- 
formity aU that was beauteous, and into famine all that was 
abundant. I repeat, however, the charge to be false. The 
Catholic mind in Ireland has made advances scarcely to be 
hoped in the short interval of its partial emancipation. But 
what encouragement has the Catholic parent to educate his off- 
spring ? Suppose he sends his son, the hope of his pride, and 
the wealth of his heart, into the army ; the child justilies liis 
parental anticipation ; he is moral in his habits, he is strict in 
his discipline, he is daring in the field, and temperate at the 
board, and patient in the camp ; the first in the charge, and 
the last in the retreat ; with a hand to achieve, and a head to 
guide, and temper to conciliate ; he combines the skill of 
Wellington with the clemency of Csesar and the courage of 
Turenne — ^yet he can never rise — ^he is a Catholic ! Take 
another instance. Suppose him at the bar He has spent his 
nights at the lamp, and his days in the forum ; the rose has 
withered from his cheek mid the drudgery of form ; the spirit 
has fainted in his heart mid the analysis of crime ; he has fore- 
gone tlie pleasures of his youth and the associates of his heart, 
and all the fairy enchantments in which fancy may have 
wrapped him. Alas ! for what ? Though genius flashed from his 
eye, and eloquence rolled from his lips ; though he spoke with 
the tongue of TuUy, and argued with the learning of Coke, and 
thought with the purity of Fletcher, he can never rise — he is 
a Catholic ! Merciful God ! what a state of society is this, in 
which thy worship is interposed as a disqualification upon thy 
Providence ! Behold, in a word, the effects of the code against 
which you petition ; it disheartens exertion, it disqualifies merit, 
it debilitates the state, it degrades the Godhead, it disobey 



SPEECH AT DUBLIN. 605 

Christianity, it makes religion an article of traffic, and its 
founder a monopoly ; and for ages it has reduced a country, 
blessed with every beauty of nature, and every bounty of Pro- 
vidence, to a state unparalleled under any constitution profess- 
ing to be free, or any government pretending to be civilized. 
To justify this enormity, there is now no argument. Now is 
the time to concede with dignity that which was never denied 
without injustice. Who can tell how soon we may require all 
the zeal of our united population to secure our very existence ? 
Who can argue upon the continuance of this calm ? Have we 
not seen the labor of ages overthrown, and the whim of a day 
erected on its ruins ; estabhshments the most solid, withering 
at a word, and visions the most whimsical reahzed at a wish ? 
Crowns crumbled, discords confederated. Kings become vag- 
abonds, and vagabonds made Kings at the capricious frenzy 
of a village adventurer ? Have we not seen the whole political 
and moral world shaking as with an earthquake, and shapes 
the most fantastic and formidable and frightful, heaved into 
life by the quiverings of the convulsion? The storm has 
passed over us ; England has survived it ; if she is wise, her pre- 
sent prosperity will be but the handmaid to her justice ; if she 
is pious, the peril she has escaped will be but the herald of her 
expiation. Thus much have I said in the way of argument to 
the enemies of your question. Let me offer an humble opin- 
ion to its friends. The first and almost the sole request which 
an advocate would make to you is, to remain united ; rely onjt, 
a divided assault can never overcome a consolidated resistance. 
I allow that an educated aristocracy are as a head to the peo- 
ple, without wliich they cannot think : but then the people are 
as hands to the aristocracy, without which it cannot act. Con- 
cede, then, a little to even each other's prejudices ; recollect 
that individual sacrifice is universal strength ; and can there be 
a nobler altar than the altar of your country ? This same 
spirit of conciliation should be extended even to your enemies. 
If England will not consider that a brow of suspicion is but a 
bad accompaniment to an act of grace ; if she will not allow 
that kindness may make those friends whom even oppression 
could not make foes ; if she will not confess that the best se- 
curity she can have from Ireland is by giving Ireland an inter- 



606 CHAKLES PHILLIPS. 

est in her constitution ; still, since her power is the shield of 
her prejudices, you should concede-where you cannot conquer : 
it is wisdom to yield, when it has become hopeless to combat. 

There is but one concession which I would never advise, and 
which, were I a Catholic, I would never make. You will per- 
ceive that I allude to any interference with your clergy. That 
was the crime of Mr. Grattan's security bill. It made the 
patronage of your religion the ransom for your liberties, and 
bought the favor of the Crown by the surrender of the church. 
It is a vicious principle ; it is the cause of all your sorrows. If 
there had not been a state establishment, there would not have 
been a Catholic bondage. By that incestuous conspu'acy be- 
tween the altar and the throne, infidelity has achieved a more 
extended dominion than by all the sophisms of her philosophy 
or all the terrors of her persecution. It makes God's apostle a 
court appendage, and God himself a court purveyor ; it carves 
the cross into a chair of state, where, with grace on his brow, 
and gold in his hand, the little perishable puppet of this world's 
vanity makes Omnipotence a menial to its power, and Eternity 
a pander to its profits. Be not a party to it. As you have 
spurned the temporal interference of the Pope, resist the spir- 
itual jurisdiction of the crown. As I do not think that you, on 
the one hand, could surrender the patronage of your religion 
to the King without the most unconscientious compromise, so, 
on the other hand, I do not think the King could ever consci- 
entiously receive it. Suppose he receives it ; if he exercises it 
for the advantage of your church, he directly violates the cor- 
onation oath, which binds him to the exclusive interest of the 
Church of England ; and if he does not intend to exercise it 
for your advantage, to what purpose does he require from you 
its surrender ? But what pretence has England for this inter- 
ference with your religion ? It was the religion of her most 
glorious era ; it was the religion of her most ennobled patriots ; 
it was the religion of the wisdom that framed her constitution ; 
it was the religion of the valor that achieved it ; it would have 
been to this day the rehgion of her empire, had it not been for 
the lawless lust of a murderous adulterer. What right has she 
to suspect your church? When her thousand sects were 
brandishing the fragments of their faith against each other, 



SPEECH AT DUBLIN. 6(J7 

aud Christ saw liis garment without a seam, a piece of patch- 
work for every mountebank who figured in the pantomime ; 
when her Babel temple rocked at every breath of her Priest- 
leys and her Paynes, Ireland, proof against the menace of her 
power, was proof also against the perilous impiety of her ex- 
ample. But if as Catholics you should guard it, the palladium 
of your creed, not less as Irishmen should you prize it, the 
relic of your country. Deluge after deluge has desolated her 
provinces. The monuments of art which escaped the barbar- 
ism of one invader, fell beneath the still more savage civiliza- 
tion of another. Alone, amid the solitude, your temple stood 
like some majestic monument amid the desert of antiquity, jusfc 
in its proportions, sublime in its associations, rich in the virtue 
of its saints, cemented by the blood of its martyrs, pouring 
forth for ages the unbroken series of its venerable hierarchy, 
and only the more magnificent from the ruins by which it was 
surrounded. Oh ! do not for any temporal boon betray the 
great principles which are to purchase you an eternity ! Here, 
from your very sanctuary, — here, with my hand on the endan- 
gered altars of your faith, in the name of that God, for the 
freedom of whose worship we are so nobly struggling — I con- 
jure you, let no unholy hand profane the sacred ark of your 
religion ; preserve it inviolate ; its light is " light from heaven ;" 
follow it through all the perils of your journey ; and, like the 
fiery pillar of the captive Israel, it will cheer the desert of your 
bondage, and guide to the land of your liberation ! 



SELECT SPEECHES OF EDMUND BURKE. 



ELECTION SPEECH AT BRISTOL, 
October 13, 1774. 



Gentlemen, — I am come hither to solicit in person that 
favor which my friends have hitherto endeavored to procure 
for me, by the most obHging, and to me the most honorable 
exertions. 

I have so high an opinion of the great trust which you have 
to confer on this occasion ; and, by long experience, so just a 
diffidence in my abilities to fill it in a manner adequate even to 
my own ideas, that I should never have ventured of myself to 
intrude into that awful situation. But since I am called upon 
by the desire of several respectable fellow-subjects, as I have 
done at other times, I give up my fears to their wishes. 
"Whatever my other deficiencies may be, I do not know what 
it is to be wanting to my friends. 

I am not fond of attempting to raise public expectations by 
great promises. At this time, there is much cause to consider, 
and very little to presume. We seem to be approaching to a 
great crisis in our affairs, which calls for the whole wisdom of 
the wisest among us, without being able to assure ourselves, 
that any wisdom can preserve us from many and great incon- 
veniences. You know I speak of our imhappy contest with 
America. I confess, it is a matter on which I look down as 
from a precipice. It is difficult in itself, and it is rendered 
more intricate by a great variety of plans of conduct. I do 
not mean to enter into them. I will not suspect a want of 
good intention in framing them. But however pure the inten- 
tions of their authors may have been, we all know that the 
event has been unfortunate. The means of recovering our 




EDxMUND BURKE. 



ELECTION SPEECH AT BRISTOL. 609 

affairs are not obvious. So many great questions of com- 
merce, of finance, of constitution, and of policy, are involved 
in this American deliberation, that I dare engage for nothing 
but that I shall give it, without any predilection to former 
opinions, or any sinister bias whatsoever, the most honest and 
impartial consideration of which I am capable. The pubhc 
has a full right to it; and this great city, a main piUar in the 
commercial interest, of Great Britain, must totter on its base 
by the sUghtest mistake with regard to our American meas- 
ures. 

Thus much, however, I think it not amiss to lay before you ; 
that I am not, I hope, apt to take up or lay down my opin- 
ions lightly. I have held, and ever shall maintain, to the best 
of my power, unimpaired and undiminished, the just, wise, and 
necessary constitutional superiority of Great Britain. This is 
necessary for America as well as for us. I never mean to de- 
part from it. Whatever may be lost by it, I avow it. The 
forfeiture even of your favor, if by such a declaration I could 
forfeit it, though the first object of my ambition, never will 
make me disguise my sentiments on this subject. 

But — I have ever had a clear opinion, and have ever held a 
constant correspondent conduct, that this superiority is con- 
sistent with all the liberties a sober and spirited American 
ought to desire. I never mean to put any colonist, or any hu- 
man creature, in a situation not becoming a free man. To 
reconcile British superiority with American hberty shall be 
my great object, as far as my little faculties extend. I am far 
from thinking that both, even yet, may not be preserved. 

When I first devoted myself to the public service, I con- 
sidered how I should render myself fit for it; and this I did 
by endeavoring to discover what it was that gave this country 
the rank it holds in the world. I found that our prosperity 
and dignity arose principally, if not solely, from two sources — 
our constitution and commerce. Both these I have spared no 
study to understand, and no endeavor to support. 

The distinguishing part of our constitution is its hberty. 
To preserve that hberty inviolate, seems the particular duty 
and proper trust of a member of the House of Commons. 
But the liberty, the only liberty I mean, is a hberty connected 



610 EDMUND BUKKE. 

with order; tliat not only exists along with order and yirtue, 
but which cannot exist at all without them. It inheres in 
good and steady government, as in its substance and vital 
principle. 

The other source of our power is commerce, of which you 
are so large a part, and which cannot exist, no more than your 
liberty, without a connexion with many virtues. It has ever 
been a very particular and a very favorite object of my study, 
in its principles, and in its details. I think many here are ac- 
quainted with the truth of what I say. This I know, that I 
have ever had my house open, and my poor services ready, for 
traders and manufacturers of every denomination. My favor- 
ite ambition is to have those services acknowledged. I now 
appear before you to make trial, whether my earnest endeav- 
ors have been so wholly oppressed by the weakness of my 
abihties, as to be rendered insignificant in the eyes of a great 
trading city ; or whether you choose to give a weight to hum- 
ble abihties, for the sake of the honest exertions with which 
they are accompanied. This is my trial to-day. My industry 
is not on trial. Of my industry I am sure, as far as my con- 
stitution of mind and body admitted. 

"When I was invited by many respectable merchants, free- 
holders, and freemen of this city, to offer them my services, I 
had just received the honor of an election at another place, at 
a very great distance from this. I immediately opened the 
matter to those of my worthy constituents who were with me, 
and they unanimously advised me not to decline it. They told 
me, that they had elected me with a view to the pubhc service ; 
and as great questions relative to our commerce and colonies 
were imminent, that in such matters I might derive authority 
and support from the representation of this great commercial 
city ; they desired me therefore to set off without delay, very 
well persuaded that I never could forget my obhgations to 
them, or to my friends, for the choice they had made of me. 
From that time to tliis instant I have not slept; and if I 
should have the honor of being freely chosen by you, I hope 
I shall be as far from slumbering or sleeping when your ser- 
vice requires me to be awake, as I have been in coming to 
offer myself a candidate for your favor. 



SPEECH OF EDMUND BUEKE. 611 



CONCILIATION WITH THE AMERICAN COLONIES. 



I HOPE, sir, tliat, notwithstanding tlie austerity of the Chair, 
your good-nature will incline you to some degree of indulgence 
towards human frailty. You will not think it unnatural, that 
those who have an object depending, which strongly engages 
their hopes and fears, should be somewhat inclined to super- 
stition. As I came into the House full of anxiety about the 
event of my motion, I- found, to my infinite surprise, that the 
grand penal bill, by which we had passed sentence on the trade 
and sustenance of America, is to be returned to us from the 
other House."^ I do confess, I could not help looking on this 
event as a fortunate omen. I look upon it as a sort of provi- 
dential favor ; by which we are put once more in possession of 
our deliberative capacity, upon a business so very questionable 
in its nature, so very uncertain in its issue. By the return of 
this bill, which seemed to have taken its flight forever, we are 
at this yery instant nearly as fi'ee to choose a plan for our 
American government as we were on the first day of the ses- 
sion. If, sir, w^e incline to the side of conciliation, we are not 
at all embarrassed (unless we please to make ourselves so) by 
any incongruous mixture of coercion and restraint. We are 
therefore called upon, as it were by a superior warning voice, 
again to attend to America ; to attend to the whole of it to- 
gether ; and to review the subject with an unusual degree of 
care and calmness. 

Surely it is an awful subject ; or there is none so on this 
side of the grave. When I first had the honor of a seat in 
this House, the affairs of that continent pressed themselves 
upon us, as the most important and most delicate object of 



* The Act to restrain the trade and commerce of the provinces of Massachu- 
setts Bay and New Hampshire, and colonies of Connecticut and Ehode Island, 
and Providence Plantation, in North America, to Great Britain, Ij-eland, and 
the British Islands in the West Indies ; and to prohibit such provinces and 
colonies from carrying on any fishery on the banks of Newfoundland, and other 
places therein mentioned, under certain conditions and limitations. 



612 EDMUND BURKE. 

parliamentary attention. My little share in this great deliber- 
ation oppressed me. I found myseM a partaker in a very high 
trust ; and having no sort of reason to rely on the strength of 
my natural abilities for the proper execution of that trust, I 
was obhged to take more than common pains to instruct 
myself in everything which relates to our colonies. I was not 
less under the necessity of forming some fixed ideas concerning 
the general policy of the British empire. Something of this 
sort seemed to be indispensable ; in order, amidst so vast a 
fluctuation of passions and opinions, to concentre my thoughts ; 
to ballast my conduct ; to preserve me from being blown about 
by every wind of fashionable doctrine. I really did not think 
it safe, or manly, to have fresh principles to seek upon every 
fresh mail which should arrive from America. 

At that period I had the fortune to find myself in perfect 
concurrence with a large majority in this House, Bowing un- 
der that high a,uthority, and penetrated with the sharpness and 
strength of that early impression, I have continued ever since, 
without the least deviation, in my original sentiments. 
Whether this be owing to an obstinate perseverance in error, 
or to a reHgious adherence to what appears to me truth and 
reason, it is in your equity to judge. 

Sir, parHament having an enlarged view of objects, made, 
during this interval, more frequent changes in their sentiments 
and their conduct, than could be justified in a particular per- 
son upon the contracted scale of private information. But 
though I do not hazard anything approaching to a censure on 
the motives of former parhaments to all tho^e alterations, one 
fact is ijndoubted, — that under them the state of America has 
been kept in continual agitation. Everything administered as 
remedy to the pubhc complaint, if it did not produce, was at 
least followed by, a heightening of the distemper ; until, by a 
variety of experiments, that important country has been 
brought into her present situation ; a situation which I will 
not miscall ; which I dare not name ; which I scarcely know 
how to comprehend in the terms of any description. 

The capital leading questions on which you must this day 
decide are these two : First, whether you ought to concede ; 



CONCILIATION WITH THE AMERICAN COLONIES. 613 

and secondly, what your concession ought to be. On the first 
of these questions we have gained some ground. But I am 
sensible that a good deal more is stUl to be done. Indeed, sir, 
to enable us to determine both on the one and the other of 
these great questions with a firm and precise judgment, I think 
it may be necessary to consider distinctly the true nature and 
the peculiar circumstances of the object which we have before 
us. Because, after all our struggle, whether we wUl or not, we 
must govern America according to that nature, and to those 
circumstances, and not according to our own imagination ; not 
according to abstract ideas of right ; by no means according 
to mere general theories of government, the resort to which 
appears to me, in our present situation, no better than arrant 
trifling. I shall therefore endeavor, with your leave, to lay 
before you some of the most material of these circumstances, 
in as full and as clear a manner as I am able to state 
them. 

The first thing that we have to consider with regard to the 
nature of the object is — the number of people in the colonies, 
I have taken for some years a good deal of pains on that point. 
I can by no calculation justify myself in placing the number 
below two millions of inhabitants of our own European blood 
and color ; besides at least 500,000 others, who form no incon- 
siderable part of the strength and opulence of the whole. This, 
sir, is, I believe, about the true number. There is no occasion 
to exaggerate, where plain truth is of so much weight and im- 
portance. But whether I put the present numbers too high or 
too low, is a matter of little moment. Such is the strength 
with which population shoots in that part of the world, that 
state the numbers as high as we wiU, whilst the dispute contin- 
ues, the exaggeration ends. Whilst we are discussing any 
given magnitude, they are grown to it. Whilst we spend our 
time in dehberating on the mode of governing two millions, we 
shall find we have millions more to manage. Your children do 
not grow faster from infancy to manhood, than they spread 
from families to communities, and from villages to nations. 

I put this consideration of the present and the growing 
numbers in the front of our deliberation, because, sir, this con- 
sideration will make it evident to a blunter discernment than 



614 EDMUND BUKKE, 

yours, that no partial, narrow, contracted, pinclied, occasional 
system will be at all suitable to such an object. It will show 
you, that it is not to be considered as one of those minima 
which are out of the eye and consideration of the law ; not a 
paltry excrescence of the state ; not a mean dependent, who 
may be neglected with little damage, and provoked with little 
danger. It will prove that some degree of care and caution is 
required in the handling such an object ; it will show that you 
ought not, in reason, to trifle with so large a mass of the in- 
terests and feelings of the human race. You could at no time 
do so without guilt ; and be assured you will not be able to do 
it long Avith impunity. 

But the population of this country, the great and growing 
population, though a very important consideration, will lose 
much of its weight, if not combined with other circumstances. 
The commerce of your colonies is out of all proportion beyond 
the numbers of the people. This ground of their commerce, 
indeed, has been trod some days ago, and with great ability, 
by a distinguished person,* at your bar. This gentleman, 
after thirty-five years — it is so long since he first appeared at 
the same place to plead for the commerce of Great Britain, — 
has come again before you to plead the same cause, without 
any other effect of tune, than, that to the fire of imagination 
and extent of erudition, which even then marked him as one of 
the first literary characters of his age, he has added a consum- 
mate knowledge in the commercial interest of his country, 
formed by a long course of enlightened and discriminating 
experience. 

[Then, after reviewing our commercial relations with America, 
Mr. Burke proceeded :] 

The trade with America alone is now within less than X500,- 
000 of being equal to what this great commercial nation, En- 
gland, carried on at the beginning of this century with the 
whole world! If I had taken the largest year of those on 
your table, it would rather have exceeded. But it will be said, 
is not this American trade an unnatural protuberance, that 
has drawn the juices from the rest of the body? The reverse. 



CONCILIATION WITH THE AMERICAN COLONIES. G15 

It; is tlie very food that lias nourished every other part into its 
present magnitude. Our general trade has been greatly 
augmented, and cxugmented more or less in almost every part 
to which it ever extended ; but with this material difference, — 
that of the six millions Avhich in the beginning of the century 
constituted the whole mass of our export commerce, the colony 
trade was but one twelfth part ; it is now (as a part of sixteen 
millions) considerably more than a third of the whole. This 
is the relative proportion of the importance of the colonies at 
these two periods ; and all reasonmg concerning our mode of 
treating them must have this proportion as its basis, or it is a 
reasoning, weak, rotten, and sophistical. 

Mr. Speaker, I cannot prevail on myself to hurry over this 
great consideration. It is good for us to be here. We stand 
where we have an immense view of what is, and what is past. 
Clouds, indeed, and darkness, rest upon the future. Let us, 
however, before we descend from this noble eminence, reflect 
that this growth of our national prosperity has happened with- 
m the short period of the life of man. It has happened with- 
in sixty-eight years. There are those alive whose memory 
might touch the two extremities. For instance, my Lord 
Bathurst might remember all the stages of the progress. He 
was in 1704 of an age at least to be made to comprehend such 
things. He was then old enough, acta parenUim jam legere, et 
quce sit j^oterit cognoscere virtus — suppose, sir, that the angel 
of this auspicious youth, foreseeing the many virtues which 
made him one of the most amiable, as he is one of most for- 
tunate men of his age, had opened to him in vision, that when, 
in the fourth generation, the third prince of the house of 
Brunswick had sat twelve years on the throne of that nation, 
which (by the happy issue of moderate and healing councils) 
was to be made Great Britain, he should see his son. Lord 
Chancellor of England, turn back the current of hereditary 
dignity to its fountain, and raise him to a higher rank of peer- 
age, whilst he enriched the family with a new one — if amidst 
these bright and happy scenes of domestic honor and prosper- 
ity, that angel should have dravv^n up the curtain, and unfold- 
ed the rising glories of his country, and whilst he was gazing 
with admhation on the then commercial grandeur of England, 



616 EDMUND BUKKE. 

tlie genius should point out to him a little speck, scarce visi- 
ble in the mass of the national interest, a small seminal prin- 
ciple rather than a formed body, and should teU him — " Young 
man, there is America — which at this day serves for httle more 
than to amuse you with stories of savage men, and uncouth 
manners ; yet shall, before you taste of death, show itself equal 
to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of 
the world. "Whatever England has been growing to by a pro- 
gressive increase of improvement, brought in by varieties of 
people, by a succession of civilizing conquests and civilizing set- 
tlements in a series of seventeen hundred years, you shall see 
as much added to her by America in the course of a single 
Hfe !" If this state of his country had been foretold to him, 
would it not require all the sanguine creduHty of youth, and 
all the fervid glow of enthusiasm, to make him beheve it ? 
Fortunate man, he has lived to see it ! Fortunate indeed, if 
he lives to see nothing that shall vary the prospect, and cloud 
the setting of his day ! 



1 




RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN 



EICHARD B. SHERIDA:^[. 



SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, IN OPPO- 
SITION TO PITT'S FIRST INCOME TAX. 



A. WISE man, sir, it is said, should doubt of everything. It 
was this maxim, probably, that dictated the amiable diffidence 
of the learned gentleman,* who addressed himself to the chair 
in these remarkable words ; " I rise, Mr. Speaker, if I have 
risen." Now, to remove all doubts, I can assure the learned 
gentleman t that he actually did rise ; and not only rose, but 
pronounced an able, long, and elaborate discourse, a consider- 
able portion of which was employed in an erudite dissertation 
on the histories of Eome and Carthage. He further informed 
the House, upon the authority of Scipio, that we could never 
conquer the enemy until we were first conquered ourselves. 
It -was when Hannibal was at the gates of Rome, that Scipio 
had thought the proper moment for the invasion of Carthage, 
— what a pity it is that the learned gentleman does not go 
with this consolation and the authority of Scipio to the lord 
mayor and aldermen of the city of London ! Let him say, 
" Rejoice, my friends ! Bonaparte is encamped at Blackheath ! 
What happy tidings ! " For here Sci'f)io tells us, you may 
every moment expect to hear of Lord Hawkesbury making 
his triumphal entry into Paris.:}: It would be whimsical to ob- 
serve how they would receive such joyful news. I should like 
to see such faces as they would make on that occasion. 
Though I doubt not of the erudition of the learned gentleman, 

* Dr. Lawrence. 

+ Mr. Perceval, afterwards Chancellor of the Exchequer, and, in 1809, Prime 
Minister. He was assassinated in the lobby of the House of Commons, May 
11, 1812, by a man named Bellingham. 

X Alludes to a boast of his lordship, at an early period of the war against 
France. 



618 RICHARD B. SHERIDAN. 

lie seems to me to liave somehow confounded the stories of 
Hanno and Hannibal, of Scipio and the Konians. He told us 
that Carthage was lost by the parsimony or envy of Hanno, in 
preventing the necessary su][3phes for the war being sent to 
Hannibal ; but he neglected to go a little further, and to relate 
that Hanno accused the latter oi' having been ambitious — 

"Juvenem furentem cupidiue regni ; " 

and assured the senate that Hannibal, though at the gates of 
Eome, was no less dangerous to Hanno. Be this, however, as 
it may, is there any Hanno in the British senate ? If there 
is, notliing can be more certain than that all the efforts and 
remonstrances of the British Hanno could not prevent a single 
man, or a single guinea, being sent for the supply of any H-an- 
nibal our mifiisters might choose. The learned gentleman 
added, after the defeat* of Hannibal, Hanno laughed at the 
senate ; but he did not tell us what . he laughed at. The ad- 
vice of Hannibal has all the appearance oi- being a good one : 

" Carfcliaginis raoenia Eomae munerata." 

If they did not follow his advice, they had themselves to blame 
for it. 

From the strain of declamation in which the learned gentle- 
man launched out, it seems as if he came to this House as 
executor to a man whose genius was scarcely equalled by the 
eccentricities he sometimes indulged. He appears to come 
as executor, and in the House of Commons, to administer to 
Mr. Burke's fury without any of his fire. It is, however, in 
vain for him to attempt any imitation of those declamatory 
harangues and writings of the transcendent author, which, 
towards the latter part of his life, were, as I think, unfortu- 
nately too much applauded. When not embellished with those 
ornaments which Mr. Burke was so capable of adding to all 
he either spoke or wrote, the subject of such declamations could 
only claim the admhation of a school-boy. The circumstance 
of a great, extensive and victorious republic, breathing nothing 
but war in the long exercise of its most successful operations, 
surrounded with triumphs, and j)anting for fresh laurels, to be 



"IN OPPOSITION TO Pitt's income tax. G19 

compared, mucli less represented as inferior, to tlie militarv 
power of England, is cliildisli and ridiculous. What similitude 
is there between us and the great Koman republic in the height 
of its fame and glory ? Did you, sir, ever hear it stated, that 
the Roman bulwark was a naval force? And if not, what 
comparison can there be drawn between their efforts and 
power ? This kind of rhodomontade declamation is finely de- 
scribed in the language of one of the Roman poets — 

"I, demeus, curre per Alpes, 
TJt pueris placeas, et declabiatio fias." 

JuvENAii, Sat. X., 166. 

Go, figlit, to please scliool-boy statesmen, and furnish a declamation 
for a Doctor, learned in tlie law. 

The proper ground, su^, upon which this bill should be op- 
posed, I conceive to be neither the uncertainty of the crite- 
rion, nor the injustice of the retrospect, though they would be 
sufficient. The tax itself will be found to defeat its own pur- 
poses. The amount which an individual paid to the assessed 
taxes last year can be no rule for what he shall pay in future. 
All the articles by which the gradations rose must be laid 
aside, and never resumed again. Circumstanced as the coun- 
try is, there can be no hope, no chance whatever, that, if the 
tax succeeds, it ever will be repealed. Each individual, there- 
fore, instead of putting down this article or that, will make a 
final and general retrenchment ; so that the minister cannot 
get at him in the same way again, by any outward sign which 
might be used as a criterion of his wealth. These retrench- 
ments cannot fail of depriving thousands of their bread ; and 
it is vain to hold out the delusion of modification or indem- 
nity to the lower orders. Every burthen imposed upon the 
rich in the articles Avhich give the poor employment, affects 
them not the less for affecting them circuitously. A coach- 
maker, for instance, w^ould willingly compromise with the min- 
ister, to give him a hundred guineas not to lay the tax upon 
coaches ; for though the hundred guineas would be much 
more than his proportion of the new tax, yet it would be much 
better for him to pay the larger contribution, than, by the lay- 



620 BICHAKD B. SHERIDAN. 

ing down of coaches, be deprived of those orders by which he 
got his bread. The same is the case with watchmakers, which 
I had lately an opportunity of witnessing, who, by the tax im- 
posed last year, are reduced to a state of ruin, starvation, 
and misery ; yet, in proposing that tax, the minister alleged, 
that the poor journeymen could not be affected, as the tax 
would only operate on the gentlemen by whom the watches 
were worn. It is as much cant, therefore, to say, that by 
bearing heavily on the rich, we are saving the lower orders, as 
it is folly to suppose we can come at real income by arbitrary 
assessment, or by symptoms of opulence. There are three 
ways of raising large sums of money in a State : First, by 
voluntary contributions ; secondly, by a great addition of new 
taxes ; and tliirdly, by forced contributions, which is the worst 
of all, and which I aver the present plan to be. I am at 
present so partial to the first mode, that I recommend the fur- 
ther consideration of this measure to be postponed for a 
month, in order to make an experiment of what might be 
effected by it. For this purpose let a bill be brought in, au- 
thorizing the proper persons to receive voluntary contribu- 
tions ; and I should not care if it were read a third time to- 
night. I confess, however, that there are many powerful 
reasons which forbid us to be too sanguine in the success even 
of this measure. To awaken a spirit in the nation, the exam- 
ple should come from the first authority, and the higher 
departments of the State. It is, indeed, seriously to be la- 
mented, that whatever may be the burdens or distresses of the 
people, the government has hitherto never shown a disposition 
to contribute anything ; and this conduct must hold out a poor 
encouragement to others. Heretofore all the pubhc contribu- 
tions were made for the benefit and profit of the contributors, 
in a manner inconceivable to more simple nations. If a native 
inhabitant of Bengal or China were to be informed, that in 
the west of Europe there was a small island, which in the 
course of one hundred years contributed four hundred and 
fifty millions to the exigencies of the State, and that every 
individual, on the making of a demand, vied with his neighbor 
in alacrity to subscribe, he would immediately exclaim, " Mag- 
nanimous nation! you must surely be invincible." But far 



IN OPPOSITION TO PITTS INCOME TAX. 621 

different would be his sentiments, if informed of tke tricks 
and jobs attending these transactions, where even loyalty was 
seen cringmg for its bonus ! If the first example were given 
from the highest authority, there would at least be some hopes 
of its being followed by other great men, who received large 
revenues from the government. I would instance particularly 
the teller of the exchequer, and another person of high rank, 
who receive from their oflfices X13,000 a year more in war than 
they do in peace. The last noble lord (Lord GrenvUle) had 
openly declared for perpetual war, and could not bring his 
mind to think of anything like a peace with the French. 
Without meaning any personal disrespect, it was the nature 
of the human mmd to receive a bias from such circumstances. 
So much was this acknowledged in the rules of this House, 
that any person receiving a pension or high employment from 
his Majesty, thereby vacated his seat. It was not, therefore, 
unreasonable to expect that the noble lord would contribute 
his proportion, and that a considerable one, to carry on the 
war, in order to show the world his freedom from such a bias. 
In respect to a near relative of that noble lord, I mean the 
noble marquis, (Marquis of Buckingham,) there could be no 
doubt of his coming forward hberally. 

I remember, when I was secretary to the Treasury, the 
noble marquis sent a letter there, requesting that his office 
might, iu point of fees and emoluments, be put under the same 
economical regulations as the others. "The reason he assigned 
for it was, " the emoluments were so much greater in time of 
war than peace, that his conscience would be hurt by feeling 
that he received them from the distresses of his country." No 
retrenchment, however, took place in that office. If, therefore, 
the marquis thought proper to bring the arrears since that time 
also from his conscience, the public would be at least X40,000 
the better for it. By a calculation I have made, which I be- 
lieve cannot be controverted, it appears, from the vast increase 
of our burdens during the war, that if peace were to be con- 
cluded to-morrow, we should have to provide taxes annually to 
the amount of X28,000,000. To this is further to be added, 
the expense of that system, by which Ireland is not governed, 
but ground, insulted, and oppressed. To find a remedy for all 



622 EICHAED B. SHERIDAN. 

these incumbrances, the first thing to be clone is, to restore the 
credit of the Bank, which has failed, as weU in credit as in 
honor. Let it no longer, in the minister's hands, remain the 
slave of political circumstances. It must continue insolvent 
till the connection is broken off. I remember, in consequence 
of expressions made use of in this House, upon former discus- 
sions, when it was thought the minister would relinquish that 
unnatural and ruinous alhance, the newspapers sported a good 
deal with the idea that the House of Commons had forbid the 
bans between him and the old lady.* Her friends had inter- 
fered, it was said, to prevent the union, as it was well known 
that it was her dower he sought, and not her person nor the 
charms of her society. The old lady herself, however, when 
wooed, was quickly won, and nothing could be more indelicate 
than to observe her soon afterwards ogling her swain, and wan- 
tonly courting that violence she at first complained of. In the 
first instance it might be no more than a case of seduction ; 
but from her subsequent conduct, it became arrant prostitution. 

" I swear I could not see the dear betrayer 
Kneel at my feet, and sigli to be forgiven; 
But my relenting heart vv^ould pardon all, 
And quite forget 'twas he that had undone me. " 

It is, sir, highly offensive to the decency and sense of a com- 
mercial people, to observe the juggle between the minister and 
the Bank. The latter vauntingly boasted itself ready and able 
to pay ; but that the minister kindly prevented, and put a lock 
and key upon it. There is a liberality in the British nation 
which always makes allowance for inability of payment. Com- 
merce requires enterprise, and enterprise is subject to losses. 
But I believe no indulgence was ever shown to a creditor, say- 
ing, " I can, but will not pay you." Such was the real condi- 
tion of the Bank, together with its accounts, when they were 
laid before the House of Commons ; and the chairmanf re- 
ported from the committee, stating its prosperity, and the great 

* " Old lady of Threadneedle Street," is in England a common expression to 
mean the Bank of England. 

+ Mr. Bragge was chairman of the Committee, and this gave Sheridan the 
hint for his punning allusion. 



IN OPPOSITION TO PITTS INCOME TAX. 623 

increase of its cash and bullion. The minister, however, took 
care to very the old saying, " Brag is a good dog, but Hold- 
fast is better." — " Ah !" said he, " my worthy chairman, this is 
excellent news, but I will take care to secure it." He kept his 
word, took the money, gave exchequer bills for it, which were 
no security, and there was then an end to all our public credit. 
It is singular enough, sir, that the report upon this bill stated 
that it -svas meant to secure our public credit from the avowed 
intentions of the French to make war upon it. This was done 
most effectually. Let the French come when they please, they 
cannot touch our public credit at least. The minister has 
wisely provided against it, for he has previously destroyed it. 
The only consolation besides that remains to us, is his assur- 
ance that all will return again to its former state at the con- 
clusion of the war. Thus we are to hope, that though the 
Bank now presents a meagre spectre, as soon as peace is re- 
stored the golden bust will make its reappearance. This, how- 
ever, is far from being the way to inspirit the nation or intimi- 
date the enemy. Ministers have long taught the people of the 
inferior order, that they can expect nothing from them but by 
coercion, and nothing from the great but by corruption. The 
highest encouragement to the French will be to observe the 
pubhc supineness. Can they have any apprehension of national 
energy or spirit in a people whose minister is eternally oppress- 
ing them ? 

Though, sir, I have opposed the present tax, I am still con- 
scious that our existing situation requires great sacrifices to be 
made, and that a foreign enemy must at all events be resisted. 
I behold in the measures of the minister nothing except the 
most glaring incapacity, and the most determined hostility to 
our Uberties ; but we must be content, if necessary for preserv- 
ing our independence from foreign attack, to strip to the skin. 
" It is an estabhshed maxim,"owe are told, that men must give 
up a part for the preservation of the remainder. I do not dis- 
pute the justice of the maxim. But this is the constant lan- 
guage of the gentleman opposite to me. We have already 
given up part after part, nearly till the whole is swallowed up. 
If I had a pound, and a person asked me for a shilling, to 
preserve the rest I should wOlingly comply, and think myself 



624 EICHAED B. SHEKIDAN. 

obliged to him. But if lie repeated that demand till he came 
to my. twentieth shilling, I should ask him, — " Where is the re- 
mainder ? Where is my pound now ? Why, my friend, that 
is no joke at all." Upon the whole, su', I see no salvation for 
the country but in the conclusion of a peace, and the removal 
of the present ministers. 



SPEECH OF EGBERT EMMET, 

BEFOEE EECEIVING SENTENCE OF DEATH. 



My Loeds, — what have I to say that sentence of death 
should not be passed on me according to law ? I have nothing 
to say that can alter your predetermination, nor that will 
become me to say, with any view to the mitigation of that 
sentence which you are here to pronounce, and I must abide 
by. But I have that to say, which interests me more than 
life, and which you have labored (as was necessarily your office 
in the present circumstances of this oppressed country) to 
destroy. I have much to say, why my reputation should be 
rescued from the load of false accusation and calumny which 
has been heaped upon it. I do not imagine that, seated where 
you are, your minds can be so free from impurity as to receive 
the least impression from what I am going to utter. ; I have no 
hopes that I can anchor my character in the breast of a Court 
constituted and trammelled as this is. I only wish, and it is 
the utmost I expect, that your lordships may suffer it to float 
down your memories untainted by the foul breath of preju- 
dice, until it finds some more hospitable harbor to -shelter it 
from the storm by which it is at present buffeted. ) 

"Were I only to suffer death, after being adjudged guilty by 
your tribunal, I should bow in silence, and meet the fate that 
awaits me without a murmur ; but the sentence of the law 
which delivers my body to the executioner, wiU, through the 
ministry of that law, labor in its own vindication to consign 
my character to obloquy ; for there must be guilt somewhere, 
whether in the sentence of the Court or in the catastrophe, 
posterity must determine. A man in my situation, my lords, 
has not only to encounter the difficulties of fortune, and the 
force of power over minds which it has corrupted or subjugated, 
but the difficulties of established prejudice ; the man dies, but 



686 SPEECH OF EGBERT E3IME1 

liis memory lives. That mine may not perish — that it may live 
in the respect of my countrymen, I seize upon this opportunity 
to vindicate myself from some of the charges alleged against 
me. When my spirit shall be wafted to a more friendly port 
— when my shade shall have joined the bands of those mar- 
tyred heroes who have shed their blood on the scaffold and 
in the field, in defence of their country and of virtue, this is 
my hope — I wish that my memory and name may animate 
those who survive me, while I look down with complacency on 
the destruction of that perfidious government which upholds 
its domination by the blasphemy of the Most High ; which 
displays its power over man as over the beasts of the forest ; 
which sets man upon his brother, and lifts his hand in the 
name of God, against the throat of his fellow who believes or 
doubts a little more than the government standard — a govern- 
ment steeled to barbarity by the cries of the orphans and the 
tears of the widows which it has made. 

[Here Lord Norbury interrupted Mr. Emmet ; saying, that the 
mean and vsdeked enthusiasts who felt as he did were not equal to 
the accomplishment of their wild designs.] 

I appeal to the Immaculate God. I swear by the throne 
of Heaven — before which I must shortly appear — by the blood 
of the murdered patriots who have gone before me, that my 
conduct has been, through all this peril and through all my 
purposes, governed only by the convictions which I have 
uttered, and by no other view than that of their cure, and the 
emancipation of my country from the superinhuman oppres- 
sion under which she has so long and too patiently travailed ; 
and I confidently and assuredly hope that wild and chimerical 
as it may appear, there is still union and strength in Ireland 
to accomplish this most noble enterprise. . - h ],,.-U^_( ^ \ 

Of this I speak with the confidence of immense knowledge, 
and with the consolation that appertains to that confidence. 
Think not, my lords, I say this for the petty gratification of 
giving you a transitory uneasiness ; a man who never yet 
raised his voice to assert a lie will not hazard his character 
with posterity by asserting a falsehood on a subject so im- 
portant to his country, and on an occasion like this. Yes, my 



BEFORE RECEIYING SENTENCE OF DEATH. 627 

lords, a man wlio does not v/ish to have his epitaph written 
until his co.untry is Hberated, will not leaA^e a weapon in the 
power of envy, nor a pretence to impeach the probity which 
he means to preserve even in the grave to which tyranny con- 
signs him. 

[Here he was again interrupted by the Court.] 

Again, I say, what I have spoken was not intended for 
your lordships, whose situation I commiserate rather than 
envy — my expressions were for my countrymen ; if there is an 
Irishman present, let my last words cheer him in the hour of 
affliction. 

[Here he was again interrupted. Lord Norbury said he did not 
sit there to hear treason.] 

I have always understood it to be the duty of a judge, when 
a prisoner has been convicted, to pronounce the sentence of 
the law ; I have also understood the judges sometimes think 
it their duty to hear with patience, and to speak with humanity, 
to exhort the victims of the laws, and to offer with tender 
benignity their opinions of the motives by which he was ac- 
tuated in the crime of which he was adjudged guilty. That 
a judge has thought it his duty so to have done, I have no 
doubt ; but where is the boasted freedom of your institutions ? 
Where is the vaunted impartiality, clemency, and mildness of 
your courts of justice, if an unfortunate prisoner, whom your 
poKcy, and not your justice, is about to dehver into the hands 
of the executioner, is not suffered to explain his motives sin- 
cerely and truly, and to vindicate the principles by which he 
was actuated ? 

My lords, it may be a part of the system of angry justice to 
bow a man's mind by humiliation to the proposed ignominy 
of the scaffold — ^but worse to me than the proposed shame, 
or the scaffold's terrors, would be the shame of such foul and 
unfounded imputations as have been laid against me in this 
Court. You, my lord, are a judge ; I am the supposed culprit ; 
I am a man, you are a man also ; by a revolution of power we 
might change places, though we never could characters. If I 
stand at the bar of this Court, and dare not vindicate my 



628 SPEECH OF KOBEET EMMET 

character, what a farce is yonr justice! If I stand at this 
bar and dare not vindicate my character, how dare you calum- 
niate it ? Does the sentence of death, which your imhallowed 
pohcy inflicts on my body, also condemn my tongue to silence 
and my reputation to reproach? Your executioner may 
abridge the period of my existence, but whilst I exist I shall 
not forbear to vindicate my character and motives from your 
aspersions ; and as a man, to whom fame is dearer than life, 
I will make the last use of that hfe in doing justice to that 
reputation which is to live after me, and which is the only 
legacy I can leave to those I honor and love, and for whom I 
am proud to perish. 

As men, my lords, we must appear on the great day at one 
common tribunal, and it will then remain for the Searcher of 
all hearts to show a collective universe, who was engaged in 
the most virtuous actions or attached by the purest motives — 
by the country's oppressors, or — 

[Here he was agaia interrupted, and told to listen to the sen- 
tence of the law.] 

My lords, will a dying man be denied the legal privilege of 
exculpating himself in the eyes of the community of an unde- 
served reproach thrown upon him during his trial, by charging 
him with ambition, and attempting to cast away, for a paltry 
consideration, the liberties of his country? Why did your 
lordships insult me ? or rather, why insult justice in demand- 
ing of me why sentence of jieath should not be pronounced ? 
I know, my lord, that form prescribes that you should ask the 
question— the form also prescribes the right of answering. 
This, no doubt, may be dispensed with, and so might the 
whole ceremony of the trial, since sentence was already pro- 
nounced at the Castle before the jury was empanelled. Your 
lordships are but the priests of the oracle, and I submit ; but 
I insist on the whole of the forms. 

[Here the Court desired him to proceed. ] 

I am charged with being an emissary of France. An emis- 
sary of France ! and for what end ? It is alleged I wish to 
sell the independence of my country ! and for what end ? Was 



BEFOKE EECEIVING SENTENCE OF DEATH. 629 

this the object of my ambition? — and is this the mode by 
which a tribunal of justice reconciles contradictions ? No, I 
am no emissary ; and my ambition was to hold a place among 
the dehverers of my country — not in power, not in profit, but 
in the glory of the achievement. Sell my country's independ- 
ence ! and for what ? Was it for a change of masters ? No, 
but for ambition ! Oh, my country ! was it personal ambition 
that could influence me ? Had it been the soul of my actions, 
could I not, by my education and fortune — ^by the rank and 
consideration of my family — have placed myself among the 
proudest of my oppressors ? My country was my idol ; to it 
I sacrificed every selfish, every endearing sentiment, and for it 
I now offer up my life. O God ! No, my lord ; I acted as an 
Irishman, determined on delivering his country from the yoke 
of a domestic faction, which is its joint partner and perpetrator 
in the parricide, for the ignominy of existing with an exterior 
of splendor and a conscious depravity : it was the wish of my 
heart to extricate my country from the doubly-riveted despot- 
ism. I wished to place her independence beyond the reach of 
any power on earth — I wished to exalt her to that proud sta- 
tion in the world. 

Connections with France were indeed intended — ^but only as 
far as mutual interest would sanction or require. Were they 
to assume any authority inconsistent witli the purest independ- 
ence, it would be the signal for its destruction ; we sought aid, 
and we sought it as we had assurance we should obtain it — 
as auxiliaries in war, and allies in peace. 

Were the French to come as invaders or enemies, univited 
by the wishes of the people, I should oppose them to the ut- 
most of my strength. Yes, my countrymen, I should advise 
you to meet them on the beach with a sword in one hand and 
a torch in the other ; I would meet them with all the destruc- 
tive fury of war, and I would animate my countrymen to immo- 
late them in their boats, before they had contaminated the 
soil of my country. If they succeeded in landing, and if forced 
to retire before superior discipline, I would dispute every inch 
of ground, burn every blade of grass, and the last entrench- 
ment of liberty should be my grave. What I could not do 
myself, if I should faU, I should leave as a last charge to my 



630 SPEECH OF BOBEKT EMMET. 

countrymen to accomplish, because I should feel conscious 
that life any more than death is unprofitable when a foreign 
nation holds my country in subjection. 

But it was not an enemy that the succors of France were to 
land. I looked indeed for the succors of France ; but I 
wished to prove to France and to the world, that Irishmen de- 
served to be assisted ; that they were indignant at slavery, and 
ready to assert the right and independence of their country. 

I wished to procure for my country the guarantee which 
Washington procured for America. To procure an aid which 
by its example would be as important as its valor — disciplined, 
gallant, pregnant with science and experience ; who woul(?i 
perceive the good, and polish the rough points of our charac- 
ter ; they would come to us as strangers and leave us as 
friends, after sharing our perils and elevating our destiny. 
These were my objects — not to receive new taskmasters, but 
to expel old tyrants. These were my views, and these only 
became Irishmen. It was for these ends I sought aid from 
France, because France, even as an enemy, could not be more 
implacable than the enemy already in the bosom of my coun- 
try. 

[Here he was interrupted by the court.] 

I have been charged with that importance in the efforts to 
emancipate my country as to be considered the keystone of the 
combination of Irishmen, or, as your lordship expressed it, 
" the life and blood of the conspiracy.;^' you do me honor over 
much ; you have given to the'sohitlaii aU the credit of a supe- 
rior. There are men engaged in the conspiracy who are not 
only superior to me, but even to your own estimation of your- 
self, my lord ; before the splendor of whose genius and virtues 
I should bow with respoctful deference, and who would think 
themselves dishonored to be called your friends ; who would 
not disgrace themselves by shaking your blood-stained hand. 

[Here he was interrupted.] 

"What, my lord ! shall you tell me on the passage to that 
scaffold, with the tyranny of which you are only the interme- 
diary executioner has erected for my murder, that I am ac- 
countable for all the blood that has and will be shed in this 



BEFORE EECEIYING SENTENCE OF DEATH. 631 

struggle of the oppressed against the oppressor ? Shall you 
tell me this, and shall I be so very a slave as not to repel it ? 
I do not fear to approach the Omnipotent Judge, to ansAver 
for the conduct of my whole life, and am I to be appalled and 
falsified by a mere remnant of mortality here ? By you, too, 
who, if it were possible to collect all the innocent blood that 
you have shed in your unhallowed ministry, in one great reser- 
voir, your lordship might swim in it. 

[Here the Judge interfered.] 

Let no man dare, when I am dead, to charge me with dis- 
honor ; let no man attaint my memory, by believing that I 
could have engaged in any cause but of my country's hberty 
and independence, or that I became the pliant minion of pow- 
er in the oppression of the miseries of my countrymen. The 
proclamation of the Provisional Government sj)eaks for our 
views; no inference can be tortured from i.t to countenance 
barbarity or debasement at home, or subjection, humiliation, 
or treachery from abroad. I would not have submitted to a 
foreign oppressor for the same reason that I would resist the 
present domestic oppressor. In the dignity of freedom, I 
would have fought on the threshold of my country, and its 
enemy should only enter by passing over my lifeless corpse. 
And am I, who lived but for my country, and who have sub- 
jected myself to the dangers of a jealous and watchful oppres- 
sor and the bondage of the grave, only to give my country- 
men their rights, and my country her independence — am I 
to be loaded "with calumny, and not suffered to resent or repel 
it? No, God forbid ! 

If the spirits of the illustrious dead participate in the con- 
cerns and cares of those who are dear to them in this transito- 
ry life, O ever dear and venerable shade of my departed fa- 
ther, look down with scrutiny upon the conduct of your suffer- 
ing son, and see if I have ever for a moment deviated from 
those principles of moraUty and patriotism which it was your 
care to instill into my youthful mind, and for which I am now 
to offer up my hfe. 

My lords, you are impatient for the sacrifice — the blood 
which you seek is not congealed by the artificial terrors that 



632 SPEECH OF EGBERT EMMET. 

surround your victim ; it circulates warmly and unruffled 
tlirougli tlie channels which God created for nobler purposes, 
but which you are bent to destroy for purposes so grievous 
that they cry to Heaven. Be ye patient ! I have but a few 
words to say. I am going to my cold and silent grave ; my 
lamp of life is nearly extinguished ; my race is run ; the grave 
opens to receive me, and I sink into its bosom ! I have but 
one request to ask at my departure from this world ; it is the 
charity of its silence ! Let no man write my epitaph ; for as 
no man who knows my motives dare now vindicate them, let 
not prejudice or ignorance asperse them. Let them and me 
repose in obscurity and peace, and my tomb remain unin- 
scribed, until other times and other men can do justice to my 
character. When my country takes her place among the na- 
tions of the earth — then, and not till then — let my epitaph be 
written. I have done. 




JAMES WHITESIDE 



WHITESIDE'S SPEECH 

AT THE lEISH STATE TEIALS, IN DEFENCE OF 
CHAELES GAVAN DUFFY. 



May it please your lordships, gentlemen of the jury, in this 
case I appear before you as the counsel of Charles Gavan Duffy, 
proprietor of the newspaper called the Nation. The solemnity 
of this state prosecution would be enough to bespeak your 
considerate attention. The principle involved in the issue — 
the all-pervading anxiety of the public — the true nature of the 
accusation itseK — combine to mark out this as a question of no 
ordinary expectation. My anxiety is so to place before you 
the justice of my client's case, that truth may prevail, and the 
cause of pubUc freedom triumph. I wiU not, at the outset, dis- 
guise from you that the result of this case is regarded by me 
with trembling apprehension, not from a vulgar terror of pop- 
ular indignation, or the force of popular fury, because the arm 
of government is powerful enough to crush and -punish such 
excesses. My apprehension arises from a better motive. I feel 
the importance of your decision. I am anxious for the charac- 
ter of our common country, for the purity of its justice, and 
that your decision may be consistent with the principles of a 
free constitution, and may rest on the immovable gTound of 
truth. 

Be assured, gentlemen, this day's proceedings will be scanned 
by the opinions of enlightened England, and whatever other 
country possesses freedom. As far as you can do, and as hu- 
man infirmity will permit, discharge your duty imflinchingly, 
between the Crown and your fellow-subject. Be tender of that 
subject's freedom, and your judgment will be applauded by 



634: Whiteside's speech 

your own consciences and by that of all just men throughout 
the world. Gentlemen, you are not empannelled to try the 
traversers for theh j)olitical opmions The soundness or un- 
soundness of theu^ views — the policy or impolicy of their pro- 
ceedings — the wisdom or the folly of their accusations — the 
possibility or impossibility of their projects being carried into 
execution, form no part whatever of your inquiry. Crime is 
alleged against defendants, and crime of a peculiarly defined 
character ; and if that peculiar crime, as it is described and 
explained on the face of this indictment, be not clearly and 
distinctly proved, no matter of what supposed offence the tra- 
versers, or any one of them, might, by possibihty, be suggested 
to be guilty, still you would be bound to acquit them on the 
present indictment.. The crime of which they are accused is 
that of conspiracy. In the proper acceptation of the word, 
there is nothing criminal involved in it. It means having one 
spirit ; and the prevailing idea conveyed by it is, that of a com- 
mon sentiment among men for the accomplishment of a com- 
mon object. 

Now, a community of sentiment on political subjects is not 
criminal. Associations exist composed of all parties. There 
are hterary, scientific, religious, and political societies. But 
as you have seen, there is in this crime of conspiracy a latitude 
of proof permitted which your own experience as jurors tell 
you would not be suffered in any other proceedings. One man 
is sought to be affected here, not by what he has himself done, 
spoken, and committed, but by what other men have done, 
spoken, and committed. The indictment here is solely for a 
conspiracy, and I cannot praise it much as a work of legal in- 
genuity or art. You might imagine the legal artist possessed 
of much bodily strength, and armed with a huge scissors, 
placing before him several piles of newspapers — the Freeman, 
the Nation, the Pilot, the Post, the Mail — and plying his task 
with no charitable spirit, but with considerable zeal, speeches 
are stripped by him of all inoffensive matter, and the other 
parts cut out, biting passages of leading articles are cut out, 
reports of speeches at public meetings given more severely than 
the speakers of the speeches intended are selected, letters of 
angry correspondents written at long intervals of time are care- 



IN DEFENCE OF CHAKLES GAVAN DUFFY. 635 

fully selected, the x^rose of the indictment is embellislied by an 
extract from a transatlantic speech made by the son of 
President Tyler, and the whole is wound up with a song. The 
proceedings of a meeting were then given, then the speeches 
at a dinner ; next came the editors of the Freeman and the 
Pilot, each charged with having pubhshed the extracts in these 
newspapers, respectively, for the purposes of this wicked con- 
spiracy, and then comes the editor of the Nation, for having 
transcribed them into his weekly pubhcation. Well, indeed, 
may I say that the guilt of any nian must be difficult of proof 
which requires a document of such extraordinary prolixity to 
have it explained to the jury, and that the innocence of that 
person must be clear indeed which needs such a mass of parch- 
ment to have it endangered or obscured. 

The Attorney-General, w^ho, I think, has stated the case on 
behalf of the Crown with great moderation and good temper, 
began by stating what were the principles and the authorities 
on which he relied as necessary to explain the doctrine of 
conspiracy. To show the jury in passing what was the evidence 
necessary to support a charge of conspiracy, I may remind 
you of the case of the King against Brownlow and others. 
There was a common purpose to dine together at Daly's Club- 
house, and I beheve they did execute their agreement merrily 
together ; there was a further agreement to sup together, which 
I suppose was executed with equal mirth ; and thirdly, they 
agreed to go together to the theatre. One had a rattle which 
he chose to throw, another was pleased to whistle, and a third 
to throw a bottle on the stage. They were finally indicted for 
a conspkacy, but the grand jury having ignored the bills, the 
Attorney-General availed himseK of his privilege to file an 
ex-offido information. The case came before a petit jury ; one 
of the accused was acquitted, but respecting the others they 
could not agree, and the matter remamed so smce, except that 
many of those engaged in the trial have since passed away, 
and are not now in existence to enliven us by then- wit, or ex- 
cite us by their eloquence. 

The learned counsel continued to refer, at considerable length 
to the opinions of Mr. Justice Hoboyd, as they were reported 
in the case of Bedford v. Birley and others, 3d vol. of Starkie s 



636 Whiteside's speech 

Eeports. That learned judge, in page 102, expresses his senti- 
ments as to what constituted, in his opinion, an unlawful 
assembly. He said — 

"But, however, gentlemen, for the purpose of showing this was an il- 
legal meeting, I will state some things which constitute an unlawful as- 
sembly — a riot is when three or four unlawfully collected together to do 
an unlawful act, as if they were creating a nuisance or in a violent manner 
beat a man ; that may constitute a riot. Persons may be riotously assem- 
bled together, yet, unless they do some act of violence, it would not go 
so far as to constitute actually a riot ; but, if they come armed, or meet 
in such a way as to overawe or terrify other persons, that of itself may, 
perhaps, under such circumstances, be an unlawful assembly . " 

Such are Justice Holroyd's opinion upon this topic. In I3age 
106 he then goes on to explain his views in the following 
language : 

"If, from the general appearance, and all its accompanying circum- 
stances, it is calculated to excite terror, alarm, and consternation — it is 
generally criminal and unlawful, that is in all those persons who go for 
purposes of that kind, disregarding the probable effect, and the probable 
alarm and consternation, and whoever gives countenance thereto is amen- 
able as a criminal jaarty. With a view to that the evidence of actual 
alarm, or absence, or want of alarm, is material. " 

But, my lords, what evidence have we had of alarm in the 
present prosecution? None, whatever. The learned judge 
then proceeded to aUude at much length to the memorable 
case of Lord George Gordon in 1780. Kennett, he said— 

"Was the Lord Mayor of London at that time, and Lord George 
Gordon called an immense number of persons in St. George's Field. 
They were called for an ostensibly lawful purpose, and there was of itself 
nothing further meant nor intended than to petition the house of parlia- 
ment to repeal acts which were passed in favor of the Roman Catholics. 
They met on that occasion in immense numbers, but not so many as on 
the occasion upon which we are now unfortunately sitting. Lord G. 
Gordoii went up Avith their petition to the House of Commons, and they 
accompanied him there. So far there was nothing amiss, except that 
being tumultuous it was indiscreet, because it was going with a great 
number of persons, which was tumultuous, or had the appearance of 
being so, and if they were not satisfied with the result, some among 
them might break out into acts of violence." 

Such were Mr. Justice Holroyd's views of illegal meetings. 
Much reliance has been placed by the counsel for the Crown 



IN DEFENCE OF CHAELES GAVAN DUFFY. 637 

in the present case on the opinions alleged to have been ex- 
pressed in this same case of Bedford's by Lord Tenterden in 
reference to the right of subjects to exercise in military 
manoeuvres ; but, my lords, on reference to Startle's report, I 
find that Lord Tenterden did not express any positive opinion 

on the subject at all. In page 128 Lord Tenterden observes 

" It is by no means to be taken for granted that it is lawful for 
the subjects of this country to practice military manoeuvres 
under leaders of their own, without authority. It is not to be 
taken for granted that that is law. 1 believe, on investigation 
of the subject, it will be found not to be law. I pronounce 
no opinion upon it," — and that is what is called the positive 
opinion of Lord Tenterden ! The Attorney-General did not 
cite the recent case of the Queen v. Vincent and others, out of 
9 Carrington and Payne, p. 95. He did not quote that case 
for 

Chief Justice. — I believe he did. 

Me. Whiteside.— No, my lord, it w^as another case he cited, 
and I wish to call your particular attention to the charge pre- 
ferred against the partj^ here. The first count charged them 
with being evil disposed persons, who did disturb the public 
peace, and excite discontent and hatred, etc., in the minds of 
her Majesty's subjects. The. twelfth count was fora tumultuous 
asseixibly, and the thirteenth count was for a riot. Here is the 
evidence given in the case. Mr. PhUlips, the mayor of Newj)ort, 
swore that he went to the meeting at eight o'clock on the even- 
ing of the 19th of March, and that he heard Yincent address 
the assemblage relative to the government. He described it 
as a cannibal and atrocious system. He then referred to the 
people's charter, and said the snow-ball of Chartism should be 
hurled from the hiU on their oppressors. Yery hke this case, 
is it not ? He told them if any policeman interfered with them 
to break his head. Yery hke what the traversers told the peo- 
ple, is it not? Mr. Johnson, a commercial traveller from 
Liverpool, was examined, and stated that he had a conversation 
with Townsend, who wanted him to supply three hundred 
muskets, six hundred cutlasses, and pistols in proportion ; biit 
he refused to furnish arms for such an abominable purpose. 
He then went and informed the magistrates, and gave evidence 



638 Whiteside's speech 

in the case. Baron Alclerson, in summing up, said, "you 
will have to say, looking at all these circumstances, whether 
the defendants attended an unlawful assembly. You must 
take the hour of the day at which the parties met, and the 
language used. You will consider how far these meetings par- 
took of that character, and whether firm and rational men, 
having their families and their property, would have reasonable 
ground to fear a breach of the peace. It must not be merely 
such as would frighten any foolish or timid person, but such 
as to alarm persons of reasonable firmness and courage." The 
jury found the defendants guilty of attending an unlawful 
meeting, but acquitted them of conspiracy. Hear what Mr. 
Baron Alderson, in his charge to the grand jury, says on the 
same case — 

' ' There is no doubt that the people of this countiy have a perfect 
right to meet for the purpose of stating what are or wliat are not their 
grievances. That right they always have had, and that right I trust they 
will always have. Let them meet if they will in open day, peaceably and 
quietly, and they would do wisely, when they meet, to do so under the 
sanction of those who are the constituted authorities of the country. To 
meet under irresponsible presidency is a dangerous thing, but neverthe- 
less if when they do meet under irresponsible presidency, and conduct 
themselves with peace, tranquillity, and order, they will perhaps lose 
their time and nothing else. The constitution of this country does not 
punish persons who, meaning to do that which is right in a peaceable 
and orderly manner, are only in error in the views they have taken ou 
some subject of political interest." 

The nest book I shall quote from is a report of the late trials 
of the Chartists in England, and it is remarkable for the clear 
law laid down in that case by Baron Eolfe. In the case I shall 
cite the people went about destroying mills, injuring property, 
and preventing people from attending to their work. Feargus 
O'Connor was one of the persons charged. He was the pro- 
prietor of the Star newspaper, and he was charged on a 
separate count framed to meet his case. The first charge 
against Mr. Feargus O'Connor was that he attempted by force 
of arms to dismiss men from their work. The next count was 
that he attempted by violence to change the laws of the realm ; 
and further, that the said Feargus O'Connor endeavored to 
create disaffection among the subjects of the realm. You 



IN DEFENCE OF CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY. G39 

see that tlie charge of spreading disaffection, standin^^ 
alone, is not sufficient — it is nothing. The learned jncl"e 
further stated that if several persons were each ignorant 
of the acts of the others, those so ignorant of the acts could 
not be considered guilty of them. No doubt it might be in- 
ferred from the acts of the parties, whether they acted in unison 
or not. Again, he observed, that as no evidence had been 
given as to a great number of the defendants, that they had 
taken any part in compelling the turnout, they would not be 
considered as participators in it. He further said that the jury, 
to convict them of conspiracy, should believe that all were 
guilty of one and the same act. Those who took a part in the 
combination to compel a rise in wages, but took no part in the 
movements that occurred, which was no part of the conspiracy, 
could not be convicted under the count for the conspiracy. 
Gentlemen, if you find them guilty upon any one count — if you 
find them all guilty, you must find them guilty of having done 
all in that count, with the illegal effect specified in that count. 

Mr. Justice Perein. — I suppose you do not mean to say 
they are to find that the traversers committed every overt 
act? 

Mr. "Whiteside. — Certainly not, my lord ; but I say they 
must find them guilty on any count of one and the same con- 
spiracy. The overt acts are quite distinct from the con- 
spiracy. 

Me. Justice Burton. — I wish to know, Mr. Whiteside, in 
what way the book you handed up to us is authenticated ? 

Me. Whiteside. — The publication of that book was by a 
man who was candid enough to state the circumstances of his 
own conviction — Mr. Feargiis O'Connor. 

Me. Justice Bueton. — Then, this is an account of the trial 
by him. 

Me. Whiteside. — Yes, my lord, and he states that he was 
satisfied that he was tried according to law, and that he was 
punished accordingly. The whole was taken in shorthand by 
hun. The first thing I direct your attention to is the vast 
meetings that have been held throughout the country. I 
have considered the general character of those meetings in 
mass. A few words as to the numbers who attended those 



640 Whiteside's speech 

meetings. I have quoted to you already tlie words of an 
eminent judge, wlio said, " God be tlianked, it never has been 
questioned that the right of the people of England to petition 
is their ancient, undoubted, unquestionable privilege." They 
may meet to petition, and will any man tell me that the meet- 
ing over which Lord Eoden presided was legal, and that to 
meet and petition for Eepeal it is unlawful ? Gentlemen, I 
may say with truth, that these meetings of the people are dis- 
liked both by kings and their ministers. 

I will now, gentlemen of the jury, call your attention to a 
few of the meetings held in England which were not con- 
sidered illegal, because they were held under the eye of the 
Enghsh Attorney-General and Solicitor General, both eminent 
lawyers, and under the eye of the government too. The first 
meeting I advert to is that which Mr. Koss, the Crown witness, 
proved he was present at — the meetmg held in London upon 
which two hundred thousand persons of the lower classes were 
present. They met together to discuss their grievance, which 
consisted of the sentence passed upon the Dorsetshire laborers. 
Two hundred thousand marched to Downing Street to visit the 
minister of the day. Lord Melbourne, with a petition which it 
took twenty men to lift. They were headed by the Rev. Dr. 
Wade, a gentleman of the established church, in his full robes, 
and, be it remembered, it was imputed to Mr. O'Connell as a 
leading fault that he went to those meetings in his red robes 
of office. It is not very likely that a man going to incite men 
to the commission of crime and violence would proceed to 
effect that object in his robes. 

I will now read to you the account of the great meeting in 
London, as I find it in the News Letter of the 27th of April, 
1834. 

[The learned gentleman then read the description, by which it 
appeared that those two hundred thousand men marched almost 
in military array — five men deep, with banners and insignia, etc.] 

Now, gentlemen, what is the result of those two hundred 
thousand people marching through the streets of London, 
with flags and banners, uninterrupted by any person, and what 
is stated by the prime minister of England sensibly is "this : 
two hundred thousand persons coming to the seat of govern- 



IN DEFENCE OP CHAELES GAYAN DUFFY. 641 

ment to present a petition is a thing that cannot be sanctioned 
by the government. He says your meeting is justifiable— your 
petition is justifiable — jouv conduct is justifiable ; I shall have 
no objection to lay your remonstrance before the King, but I 
cannot receive a petition from a deputation of two hundred 
thousand persons. I admit that you had a right to meet and 
come to that conclusion — send it to me to-morrow and I shall 
lay it before the King. Where is it suggested those men are 
guilty of conspkacy for meeting for those objects with flags 
and banners, and marching through the streets of London ? 
An account of that meeting is given in the Morning Post of 
the day. It commends the conduct of the government in not 
interfering with the meeting, and, speaking with regard to the 
London Times that had censured the meeting, observed they 
thought such conduct strange when they recollected the loud 
praise formerly given by that journal to the brickbat and the 
bludgeon. 

I shall next have to refer to a meeting of the Birmingham 
Political Union, held October 8th, 1831. " The spot fixed upon 
for the scene of this amazing spectacle was New Hall Hill, a 
large vacant spot of ground situated in the northern suburbs 
of the town, and pecuharly well formed for such a purpose. 
It consists of about twelve acres of rising land, in the form of 
an amphitheatre. In the valley a number of wagons were 
ranged in half circle, the centre one being appropriated to the 
chairman and the various speakers who addressed the meeting. 
About half-past eleven o'clock, the Birmingham Union, headed 
by Messrs. Attwood, Scholefield, Mutz, Jones, etc., and pre- 
ceded by the band, began to arrive on the ground, but such 
were the numbers that a considerable time elapsed before all 
had taken their stations on the ground. The scene at this 
moment was peculiarly animated and picturesque ; at different 
points of the procession various splendid banners were carried, 
on which were as varied devices and mottoes. It is utterly im- 
possible adequately to describe the appearance of this most 
magnificent assembly. When the council had taken their sta- 
tions on the platform, upon the lowest compiatation not less 
than eighty thousand were within the range of vision, and in 
about half an hour afterwards, when the Staffordshire Unions 



642 Whiteside's speech 

arrived upon the ground, the number present was calculated 
hj some at considerably above one hundred thousand. On 
the ridge of the hill which crowned the amphitheatre the ban- 
ners, in number about twenty, were placed at equal dis- 
tances, and gave a beautiful finish to the perspective. 
Among other distinguished persons present on the occasion, 
drawn to the spot by motives of curiosity, but who took no 
part in the proceedings, were Prince Hohenlohe, (the brother 
of the celebrated prophet of that name,) and the Chamberlain 
to the King of Prussia." They intimated their intention to 
pass a resolution not to pay taxes, and to send up one hundred 
thousand persons to London to quicken the deliberations of the 
House of Lords. That would be unlawful. Did any minister 
of the day say that meeting was illegal ? No Attorney-Gene- 
ral that ever stood on English ground would have dared to 
say so, and I don't say that insolently or presumptuously. I 
recollect that Lord John Russell said he did not see why the 
people should not speak out, and that the whisper of a faction 
should not put down the voice of the nation. There was then 
none of the mawkish, sentimental twaddle about meri express- 
ing their conscientious convictions that such a law should be 
the law of England as would provide for their freedom. There 
were other resolutions, which I shall not read to you, which 
were very bold and startling. I will now bring the Attorney- 
General to the part of England he is connected with — his own 
happy Yorkshire. That is the place where he is a representa- 
tive, and I am sure no more honorable or better representative 
could be found. I will bring him back, gentlemen, to York- 
shire, and teU him when next he goes there to inquire about 
King Richard — that is Mr. Oastler-— and to see his placards. 
I shall now quote from the York Herald and General Adverti- 
ser of the 28th of April, 1832 ; and I will show how they met : 
" Geeat Yoekshike Meeting in Support of the Ten Houbs' Fac- 
TOKY Bill. — This great meeting in support of justice and humanity, was 
held in the Castle Yard, on Tuesday last. Early on Monday morning, 
the bustle began in Leeds ; the streets were crowded with people wait- 
ing to witness the arrival of the different divisions, the bells of the parish 
church rung merry peals ; and as the weather was then favorable, the 
scene was altogether lively and cheering. According to the programme, 
the various divisions of operatives entered Leeds from Halifax, Hudders- 



IN DEFENCE OF CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY. 643 

field, Bradford, Dewsbury, Heckmondwicke, Holmfirth, Keighly, etc., 
•with their flags and music. They repaired to White Cloth Hall Yard, 
where refreshment was served to those who, from want of employment, 
could not afford to supply their own wants. The first Leeds Division 
left that town at eleven o'clock at night, and the second an hour after ; 
but it is needless for .us to dwell upon the minutise of a dark and dreary 
march through rain and mire, and it is sufficient to observe that a strong 
sense of duty, and the consciousness of being engaged in a righteous 
cause, kept up the spirit, and gave nerve to the exertions of those thou- 
sands of pedestrians. " 

[The learned gentleman then read a description of the proces- 
sion , banners, etc., and an extract from the speech of Mr. Oastler, 
and proceeded.] 

Mr. Oastler did not mince the matter. Notliing could be 
more distinct or emphatic than his language. He began by 
saying that they had come together to give a vote against the 
unendurable white slavery. The result of that meeting was a 
petition to parliament. They met for the purpose of obtaining 
that ten hours' bill which was not then, but which is now the 
law of the land. They met in thousands and tens of thousands 
— they assembled, they declaimed. They were met for one 
combined object ; they came together with banners and music, 
and some of their language was a thousand times stronger 
than any that had been used in this agitation. They de- 
nounced the aristocracy, and declared that the wealth they 
possessed was the proceeds of their sweat and labor. 

Did our Attorney-General ever say that because those men 
combined for a common object, the means they took were ille- 
gal ? Gentlemen of the jury, I will now draw your attention to 
the meeting which was held at Hillsborough, and which I 
think Mr. Shell spoke of to you, and I will take the report of 
it from the Dublin Evening Mail of the 31st of October. The 
men of the North are described as having done their duty well, 
and I am happy to hear it. I admire them and I hke them 
for it. They marched to Hillsborough, " in border fashion." 
to express what ? — that the men of the North were determined 
that the Union should be maintained, and that they would 
stand by the government in maintaining it with their lives and 
fortunes. They marched there to express that determination 



64:4: Whiteside's speech 

— by what means? by what is called, in the language of the in- 
dictment, " the demonstration of physical force." They resisted 
the agitation for the Repeal of the Union. Had they a right to 
do so? "What ! seventy-five thousand men meet and march " in 
border fashion" to Hillsborough to maintain the Union, and do 
you, gentlemen of the jury, think if they met to-morrow for a like 
purpose again to express their determination to maintain the 
Union, and to declare their confidence in Mr. Attorney-Gene- 
ral and Mr. Solicitor-General to say how grateful and how 
much indebted they were to them for it, and passed a vote to 
that effect for the spirited zeal and ability, and, I will add, 
moderation with which they conducted these prosecutions — I 
ask would not Mr. Smith return them thanks in his most flow- 
ing and graceful style ? How deeply grateful he would express 
himseK, and how would he not say : " Gentlemen, to the latest 
period of my hfe I shaU cherish this expression of the confi- 
dence and approbation of so many of my fellow-countrymen, 
and I cannot sufficiently express my gratitude for the too 
flattering manner in which you have declared your approba- 
tion of my conduct, and that of the government of which I am 
an unworthy member. Gentlemen, I am happy to find that 
you are determined to sustain the Union, which is now the 
law, the church, and the state, and aU the estabhshed institu- 
tions of the country." 

Yes, gentlemen, of the jury, seventy- five thousand men met 
at Hillsborough for a common object, and having .a common 
purpose, and they did what , they met for in capital fashion. 
Scarcely one who met there — and there were no women or 
children among them — but could handle a gun and polish a 
musket ; and, gentlemen, I believe the Attorney-General re- 
joices, from the bottom of his heart, that they can do so. 
Suppose those men came to a resolution, such as the follow- 
ing: "Eesolved — That we are of opinion that the Union is 
unconstitutional, illegal, and a grievance, and should be re- 
pealed." I would ask had they not equally a right to meet 
and express that opinion ? Had they a right to say that they 
would resist the Eepeal of the Union ? I say they had. The 
Solicitor-General says they had not, by this prosecution. There 
is no law that I know of for one class of men any more than 



m DEFENCE OF CHAELES GAVAN DUFFY. 645 

for auotlier ; there is no law for tlie nobleman that is not for 
the peasant ; and I have no doubt on my mind that you will 
not make any distinction whatever between the assemblao-e of 
seventy- five thousand men at Hillsborough and seventy-five 
thousand men at Tara. 

I have no more doubt than that I am now a living man, 
that with twelve men on their oaths, no such consideration of 
a paltry or pitiful nature will be allowed to enter their box, as 
to induce them to hold that meetings of a peaceful character, 
to petition the legislature and the Crown, are not as legal and 
consistent with the rights of the subject as that the Crown of 
these kingdoms belongs of right to our most gracious sover- 
eign. And now, gentlemen, I will take the hberty of directing 
your attention to the general character of the meetings, as it 
is demonstrated by the general tenor of the evidence, for I 
will take the evidence en masse in this respect. 

During the few weeks of respite which your lordships were 
kind enough to permit us, we appointed agents throughout 
every district of the country, to whom we assigned the duty of 
discovering what acts of violence, if any, had been committed 
at those meetings — whether the person of any man had been 
assaulted, and whether the property of any man had been 
injured — whether men who differed on pohtical points from the 
traversers felt terror or alarm at the meetings ; and we will 
prove by evidence the most incontestable, that no one of these 
things was ever known to have occmTed. No alarm was felt 
by any rational man in the community, for rue injury was any- 
where offered to life, character, or property. No living man 
had been adduced as a witness to prove anything of the kind, 
and for this obvious reason, that such a statement was utterly 
incapable of proof. The police were scattered everywhere 
through the country. "What was the sum and substance of 
their testimony ? This, that whether they were disguised or 
not disguised they were never subjected to unworthy treatment 
at the hands of the people — that no injury was ever inflicted 
upon them — that the people conducted themselves invariably 
with peacefulness, good order, and tranquilhty — and that, 
although this disadvantage is naturally connected with the 
assembling together of multitudes in vast masses, that the ill 



64:6 Whiteside's speech 

beliavior of a solitary individual may be imputed to the charge 
of the whole meeting, and may bring danger on all, yet on no 
one occasion was there an instance of even an individual im- 
propriety of conduct. If the contrary was susceptible of 
proof, why was it not proved ? Our meetings were peaceable, 
orderly, and legal. But I forgot that, in saying this, I am ut- 
tering my own condemnation, for the monstrous proposition 
for which the Attorney-General is contending is, that the more 
peaceable, the more orderly, the more decorous were the 
meetings, the more deserving are they of reprehension ; and 
the more eloquently is it attested that their object and purpose 
are wicked and treasonable. 

The fact is, our peaceable demeanor is nothing more or less 
than an evidence of the atrocity of our fell intent. If we had 
acted Hke the old Irish — if we had demeaned ourselves like 
drunken, besotted, ill-conditioned men, knocking down and 
beating all we met, that w^ould have been all natural, and 
nobody's suspicions would have been aroused. That would 
have been quite consistent with the Irish character — the law 
would then have been broken, as it ought to have been broken, 
and as it had been broken in Ireland from time immemorial. 
But no ; we demeaned ourselves with courteousness toward 
every one, with the strictest good order ; and for that reason 
the suspicions of the Attorney-General are aroused — ^for that 
reason he walks into court with Hawkins and Hale in his 
hand, to prove that we have been guilty of treason, conspiracy, 
and everything that is horrible. I defy any man to keep the 
step to such music as is played by the temperance bands ; and 
because the people did not do so, oh, says the Attorney-Gen- 
eral, that's rank sedition ! He hears some attempt made by a 
parcel of hojs in the country to play some tune, and up he 
starts and says, that's rank treason. They don't play party 
tunes, however, these temperance bands ; no, they are not like 
the music — the good and loyal music — played by the bands in 
the North of Ireland. Oh, dear ! not at aU ; I'll tell you the 
music they played there — " The Protestant Boys will Carry 
the Day," " The Boyne Water," and " Oh, the Croppies Lie 
Down," of course, down, down, croppies he down. These are 
the loyal tunes in the North ; they despise all others in the 



m DEFENCE OF CHAKLES GAVAN DUFFY. 647 

world, and many a broken head, and black eye, and sore arm 
was the result of not joining with the loyal bands who play 
those loyal tunes. They don't play " God Save the Queen," 
there at all, and because the temperance bands play it, oh ! 
says the Attorney-General, that's rank treason. Well, I think 
the charge was not far wide of the mark, for I never heard of 
a fouler or a darker conspiracy — to do what, though? — to 
murder harmony. Oh, yes, these temperance bands did con- 
spire, confederate, combine, and agree, to murder har- 
mony. 

We have heard of mottoes, too, and a good deal about the 
treasonable designs of them. Mind, they don't bear the in- 
scription of church and state, for one of the first of them was, 
" Liberty and Old Ireland." Compare that with church and 
state, and if you do not conclude that it is rank treason, 
why I ask you, is it not rank treason and foul con- 
spiracy, to put "Liberty and Old Ireland" on a flag? Another 
has " Eepeal of the Union," and another, " We will not be 
Slaves," — there's treason for you — no getting out of that. 
Come we to the next, and its awful, "We will not be Slaves !" 
There's treason for you. The people say, we will trust in 
O'Connell and his advice, who tells us to come quietly to a 
meeting, and go home peaceably. There's treason for you. 
He tells us not to commit a crime, and we obey him ; that's 
rank treason. We go to meetings quietly, return peaceably, 
don't drink, commit no crime, violate no law, and up starts the 
Attorney-General and tells us, it is all rank treason and foul 
conspiracy. 

Talking about mottoes, it's very odd what I can teU 
you of the late Duke of Sussex — I will go even to royalty 
for it. The Duke of Sussex made a speech some time after 
the Manchester massacre. That speech was delivered at the 
Fox Ciub dinner, in Norwich, in the je&v 1820, and when the 
King's health was given it was drunk in silence — mind that, in 
silence— the King was the brother of the Duke of Sussex, and 
yet his health was given in silence. That's not the way we do 
the thing in Ireland. When the Queen's name is mentioned, 
we kick up our heels, and fling our hats into the air, and shout 
for joy— that's the way we do things here. At the dinner 



648 Whiteside's speech 

where the Duke of Sussex made the speech there was a mot- 
to, " Liberty or Death !" and the Duke said he would prefer 
losing his life to his liberty. That was the language of one 
that might have filled the throne of England; but the 
moment a poor Irishman puts Liberty on a banner, the officers 
of the Crown start up and say, it's all treason. 

In the course of this trial, a speech of Mr. O'Conneh's, in 
which he speaks of the battle of the Boyne, and the defeat of 
the Irish people, was read. It was singular enough, that 
Scott, in alluding, on one occasion, to the battles of his country- 
men in flood and field, admonished the Scots not to faU into 
the mistake of their ancestors, but to be steady, firm, and 
united in their moral agitation, and not to be divided and 
wavering as their ancestors were in their physical conflicts. 
This was precisely the meaning of Mr. O'Connell's allusion to 
the battle of the Boyne. He encouraged the people to firm- 
ness in the political struggle in which they were engaged, by a 
reference to historical facts. His language plainly meant 
nothing more nor less than this — " By their want of persever- 
ance your ancestors lost the memorable battle of the Boyne ; 
in the constitutional struggle in which you are engaged, be 
sure that you preserve perseverance and unity, and you will 
certainly succeed." But let me ask you, gentlemen, is my chent 
responsible for the speeches of Mr. O'Connell? Mr. Duffy 
was not at any of the monster meetings. 

[The learned gentleman here referred at some length and with 
considerable ability and great ingeniousness, to the speeches relied 
on by the Crown. He strongly censured Lord Beaumont's attack 
on Mr. O'Connell, and justified his calling the English foreigners 
on decisions of the English law courts. He also ridiculed the idea 
that any speech of a minister could make meetings for any legal 
purpose, peaceably conducted, illegal. In looking to what had oc- 
curred at the meeting at MuUaghmast, there might have been some- 
thing said which was violent and improper; but looking to the cor- 
rect report of what Mr. O'Connell had said, so far from expressing 
any wish to make any religious distinctions by a reference to the 
massacre supposed to have taken place, he said it was a massacre 
committed, not by Protestants on Catholics, but by Irish Catholics 



IN DEFENCE OF CHARLES GAYAN DUFFY. 649 

upon members of the same faith. His object evidently was not to 
create any rehgious distinctions, or to create ill will between Pro- 
testant and Catholic. Mr. Whiteside then adverted to the Proces- 
sions Act, which he showed had reference to Orange processions 
only; and after stating the parliamentary history of the measure, 
thus continued:] 

There was one other gentleman who supported the amend- 
ment, and he is, I believe, the second gentleman you are called 
upon to convict, another son of Mr. O'Connell, and on the 
same manly and constitutional grounds, that if men were 
wrong in their opinion, that the power of the law w^as sufficient- 
ly stringent to put them down ; but they should be allowed 
irankly to state their opinions. He spoke the opinions of a 
respectable portion of the population of Ireland — of millions 
of the Irish people. Will the learned gentleman stand up to 
tell you that marching — I put it that they marched regularly 
in procession — I want to know : Will it here be laid down by the 
bench or asserted by the law officer of the Crown, that that is 
illegal? That, as against the Orangemen, required an inter- 
position of a statute to put it down, and you, gentlemen, are 
called upon without any statute, to declare by your verdict, 
that such processions are illegal and unconstitutional. There- 
fore, gentlemen of the jury, to sum up matters in relation to 
those meetings, whether with regard to processions as they are 
called, I submit they were lawful and legal, and that you know 
of your own knowledge, as part of the history of the country, 
that processions a hundred times more formidable occurred for 
a hundred years, without objection, and that it required an 
act of the legislature to put them down, and that you will say 
to those legislators. As you thought fit to put down the Pro- 
testants of the North, we will now leave you to deal with those 
processions that you would not also put down, though called 
upon to do so. 

It is insinuated that those large meetings were calculated to 
excite discontent, but the kind of discontent is not stated. 
Many men are discontented who are not conspirators. A hun- 
gry man is discontented, and Cicero, with all his eloquence, 
could not make him a contented subject, though not a con- 
spirator. The advocates for the abolition of slavery were dis- 



650 Whiteside's speech 

contented. The very legislature has felt the wisdom of dis- 
content, and made laws which never would have been made 
but for the discontent. Therefore, it is not a crime to be dis- 
content with any law, and that does not make my client out to 
be a conspirator, except something is done illegal or subversive 
of the principles of the constitution. I take it that the word 
discontent may be better understood by coupling it with the 
word disaffection. It is not said to be disaffection against her 
Majesty or the forms of the constitution. No such thing. It 
is not stated that the discontent relates to the sovereign or her 
authority. I quite admit, that to excite discontent against the 
form of the constitution would be illegal ; to excite discontent 
against the House of Commons would be seditious ; to excite 
discontent against the just prerogatives of the House of Peers 
would be seditious ; to excite discontent against "royalty, to 
curtail the prerogatives of the Crown, to say the Crown was 
an unnecessary part of the constitution, would be seditious ; 
but, to admit the Queen, Peers, and Commons is the best and 
most beneficial form of government that the wit of man can 
contrive for the protection and prosperity of the people, and to 
wish to extend the beneficent principles of that constitution to 
every part of the empire, never can be held to be discontent 
against the constitution which you applaud, and which you de- 
sire to have extended to the land of your birth. Therefore, 
gentlemen, all that has been said in that indictment about dis- 
affection and disloyalty only applies to an effort not to do away 
with the House of Commojis, but to restore it ; not to abohsh 
the House of Peers, but to bring it back to where its presence 
is so desirable. Not to limit the prerogative of the Crown, but, 
perhaps improperly, to extend its privileges. How then can 
that be demonstrated to be an illegahty. 

Now, gentlemen, consider for a moment the zeal of my client, 
and some of the other traversers, to effect their object, and put 
yourselves in their position. Suppose you were of opinion 
that the Union had been carried by unfair and dishonest men, 
and that you conscientiously believed it to be an evil to your 
country, what mode would you naturally resort to to obtain the 
repeal of that measure ? Having reflected on the past history 
of Ireland, what course would naturally suggest itself to you 



IN DEFENCE OF CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY. 651 

to get from the parliament of England the measure you de- 
manded ? ■ An unreflecting man might say, why not ask it of 
the Crown ? Why not rely quietly on the justice of the cause? 
But an Irishman, one of the traversers, might say, we did ap- 
peal to justice, and we found it a broken reed. We did rely 
on the truth and justice of our cause, but we gained nothing 
by it. It is a very questionable doctrine, indeed, whether po- 
Htical rights and privileges are only to be granted when it is 
necessary to concede them for the purpose of checking discon- 
tent, and to teach that great but painful secret, to rely on pop- 
ular organization, and everything wiU be granted, but that 
without it, everything would be denied. 

[Mr. Whiteside continued briefly to advert to the agitations 
which have been organized in Ireland since 1760, when the first 
association of Catholics was formed; and having come down to 
the Catholic Association, he showed that in everything, save the 
object, the Kepeal Association was its fac simile.] 

They circulated, in 1828, eight hundred copies of the Weekly 
Kegister. The Brunswick clubs have done the same by the 
Evening Mail. The government of the day passed an act to 
put down the Catholic Association. What, then, was the ob- 
vious duty of the government with respect to the Eepeal As- 
sociation ? If they Avanted to put it down, why not adopt the 
course pointed out by Lord Jocelyn in the month of May last ? 
and when they, in effect, admitted all associations of a similar 
kind before to have been legal, it is impossible for the most 
discriminating eyes to discover a difference between them. I 
am sure it will be admitted on all hands that, as a lawyer, 
there is no man whose words are more deserving attention 
than Lord Plunket ; and now let me draw your attention to the 
opinion which he has expressed relative to the legality of the 
Cathohc Association. He was too good a lawyer not to know 
that the association was not at variance with the common law 
of these countries, and that in order to its suppression it was 
necessary that the government should be armed with additional 
powers beyond those which they then possessed. Accordingly, 
after Mr. Goulbourn had given a description of the association, 
Lord Plunket rose and expressed himself in the following 
language : 



652 Whiteside's speech 

[Here the learned counsel read an extract from Lord Plunket's 
speech on the occasion in question, in which he stated, inter alia, 
that he would not take upon him to say that the society, the Catho- 
lic Association, was illegal.] 

Common sense and common law were on the side of Lord 
Plunket, and that the principles which he propounded were 
founded on truth is clearly evidenced by subsequent events, for 
the government, finding it utterly impossible to crush the as- 
sociation by common law proceedings, were obliged to have 
recourse to parliament for new and more extensive powers. 
Lord Brougham's speech on that memorable debate is one 
which for brilliancy of thought and energy of expression, must 
ever stand pre-eminent. He, too, demonstrated the absurdity 
of alleging that the association was at variance with the com- 
mon law ; and hear the language in which he propounds his 
opinions. 

[The learned counsel read from the Mirror of ParUament, Lord 
Brougham's eloquent defence of the Catholic Association, in which 
the noble lord, after ridiculing the conduct of those who pretended 
that the peaceful conduct of the people during the emancipation 
movement constituted the most appalling feature of the movement, 
concluded by observing that such language brought to his mind the 
quotation :] 

" My wound is great because it is so small." 

And surely the inference was plain that was conveyed in the 
next line — 

" Til en 'twould be greater were it none at all." 

And upon the same principle it is contended that the danger 
of the present movement bears an exact proportion to the 
tranquillity and good conduct of the people. "Well, then came 
two acts of parliament. The first, ^vhich was the 6th of George 
IV., chap. — , was for the suppression of the association ; and 
next came an act which I think the Attorney-General might as 
well have refrained from alluding to. It is an act which ex- 
pired in two years from its passing. It was called the Coer- 
cion Act. A more tyrannical act of parliament was never 
passed by any government ; and it is to be regretted that it 



IN DEFENCE OF CHAELES GAYAN DUFFY. 653 

sliould have been introduced bj a ministry from wliom we 
sliould rather have expected measures favorable to the hber- 
ties of the people. How, I ask, can you be called upon to de- 
clare that the Kepeal Association, which is less comprehensive 
and more mild in its constitution than any of the others, is, 
unlike them, at variance from the common law? The first 
thing on which the Attorney-General relied, in order to prove 
the constitution of the association, and the full intent of the 
conspiracy, was the associates' card ; but I, for the life of me, 
cannot understand what evidence of conspiracy there is on the 
face of that document, unless, indeed, a sketch of the bank of 
Ireland (a very bad one, by the way) can be regarded in that 
hght. On one corner of it is the word Catholic, on another, 
the word Protestant, on the third, the word Presbyterian, and 
in the middle, the motto — Quis separahit. That did not look 
like a conspiracy ; did it not rather look like a charitable and 
generous attempt to unite all classes of religionists in the same 
bond of union, and to merge in oblivion all sectarian differ- 
ences ? My learned friend did not allude to this motto, and 
yet I think it is of no insignificant importance — ^for it proves 
the true character of the movement, and shows that instead of 
having been instituted, as alleged by the Attorney-General, 
for the purpose of spreading dissension among the different 
classes of her Majesty's subjects, it was instituted expressly for 
the purpose of promoting good will and good fellowship among 
all classes of the community. The Attorney-General next re- 
ferred to the members' card, and appeared to be of opinion 
that it was pregnant with evidence most damning and conclu- 
sive of the seditious objects of the Eepealers ; but I confess I 
am quite at a loss to imagine how he managed to arrive at such 
a conclusion. One corner of the card is occupied by a statis- 
tical calculation of the yearly amount of the revenue of our 
country ; there is, surely, no mark or token of conspiracy in 
that. In another corner we find an accurate statement of the 
population of the country, in another corner we find a correct 
statement of the geographical extent of the country ; as com- 
pared with other countries ; there is then a statement of how 
much Ireland supphed toward the maintenance of the wars, and 
the whole concludes by the assertion of a fact which I am sure 



654 Whiteside's speech 

no man here will dispute — namely, that we have no parliament ; 
and yet this card is given in evidence to prove a conspiracy. 
Undoubtedly there are some historical allusions in the card, but 
will it be pretended for a moment that it is criminal to allude to 
historical events ? If so, the Scotch people ought to be put on 
trial for conspiracy, and Burns, who wrote some beautiful lines 
on Bannockburn, must henceforward be handed down to pos- 
terity as a conspirator. But now I come to the volunteers' 
card, and were it not for the valuable assistance which I have 
no doubt I wiU receive from your lordships in the task, I would 
approach the interpretation of this card with fear and trem- 
bhng. In one corner of it I find a likeness, faithful I am to 
presume, of a celebrated Irish legislator, who rejoiced in the 
appellation of OUam Fodlha. I confess, with shame, my utter 
incompetency to treat of the merits of this gentleman — but my 
Lord Chief Justice, who is deeply read in Irish lore, is conver- 
sant, no doubt, with his writings, and will understand the prin- 
ciples of law which have been propounded by this illustrious 
Solon. He, gentlemen, will fully explain to you the principles 
which this illustrious legislator inculcated, and is the best judge 
of what was seditious, unlawful, and rebellious in putting the 
head of 011am Fodlha on the card. In that case I have to tell 
you, gentlemen, that the judges on the bench are a party to 
the conspiracy, for, if you look into the hall of the courts, a 
place where you come to seek for justice, and where it was 
most likely to be had inside, I say, the founders of this institu- 
tion have had the hardihood to place the head of OUam Fodlha 
in a niche there. You will give all the value of purity of inten- 
tion to the people who thought OUam Fodlha ought to be a 
model of uprightness and purity, while you must brand as con- 
spirator any man who puts that name on a card. Here is a 
name that I confess puzzles me a little, and one in reference to 
which I must certainly apply to Judge Burton for assistance. 
It is the next name on the card, and is called Dathy. Did 
you ever hear of such a name as Dathy ? Why, the very 
sound of it is conspiracy. Dathy ! but who he was, what his 
opinion and thoughts, how he conducted himself, whether in 
accordance with the law or against it, I can't teU. But if there 
was anything particularly wicked in his conduct, to show you 



IN DEFENCE OF CHARLES GAYAN DUFFY. G55 

that because his name was put on this card, the people who 
did so were conspirators in Ireland, I leave it for the learned 
judge to explain it to you, gentlemen of the jury. All I know 
about the gentleman is, that I am assured by Mr. Moore here 
he was a Pagan, and died at the foot of the Alps, from a flash 
of lightning. The learned Attorney-General forgot to prove to 
you what he said, or that such persons as Dathy or 011am 
Fodlha ever existed at all. I leave it to you, gentlemen, to 
judge what the names of those old gentlemen had to do with 
the conspiracy charged against the defendants here, and you 
are also to determine that the defendants are guilty of a foul 
conspiracy, because the names were on the cards. The learned 
judge, who is so well versed in the antiquities of Ireland, will 
examine into all these matters, and no doubt he will enlighten 
you very much on the subject. But the defendants go forth 
and put two other names on their cards, and what names are 
those ? The names of Grattan and Flood. Yes, they had the 
hardihood to put such names on their cards. Men whose 
names would go down to posterity — whose memory would be 
handed down from generation to generation as long as Ireland 
lasted ; but how would those names be handed down ? Was it 
as men who struck down the monarchy and abohshed the con- 
stitution of the realm — who, by their fierce spirits and force of 
arms, carried all before them ? Would they be handed down 
as such ? No, they would not ; but as true men, to one of 
whom even the Irish Protestant parliament had voted no less 
a sum of money than £100,000 for his exertions in the cause 
of his country ; the two peaceable men, who had, by their per- 
suasive and eloquent tongues, accomplished more than ever 
was accompHshed by man — the two men to whom the world 
looked back with admiration, respect and esteem, and is it 
come to this in Ireland, that an Irish jury are called upon to 
pronounce men a band of conspirators, because they put the 
names — the immortal names — of Flood and Grattan on their 
cards ? Are the defendants to be found guilty of a conspiracy 
for inserting the names of such men on their cards, whose hves 
and actions they endeavored, if not to emulate, at least to fol- 
low? If such be the case, I say it here, and I say it emphatic- 
ally, that the answer will be found enshrined in the hearts of 



656 WHITESIDE'S SPEECH 

an Irisli jury. What is there treasonable in the names of 
Grattan and Flood being put on a card ? The next card is 
rather singular, and if treason existed in the names of OUam 
Fodlha, and of Grattan and Flood, I deny the ingenuity of 
man to discover anything in this portion of the card bordering 
on conspiracy. Holbrooke was employed by the board of 
Works, in connexion with the Castle, and this was the man 
who was employed in open day to print the card for the ap- 
pointment of Eepeal Wardens — nothing dark, secret, or hid- 
den about it ; ah. done openly in the face of day, and that by a 
man employed by government. The first thing I see on that 
card is a picture of the Queen on the throne, with the sceptre 
in her hand, and the crown on her head, and underneath, the 
words, " God save the Queen." If that was not the expression 
of loyalt}^ I don't know what is ; and unless you can come to 
the conclusion that there is something very malignant and 
wicked in that, you must and wall say, not guilty. 

We next pass on to the beauties of nature, and I find here 
on the left of the picture the Giant's Causeway ; that is a rare 
and curious production of nature. Were any of you ever at 
the Giant's Causeway ? If not, go there, and endeavor to dis- 
cover the analogy between the conspiracy which the Attorney- ■ 
General insinuated existed between it and the present defend- 
ants. Where do we get in next ? To Glendalough, in the 
county of Wicklow. I find that on the right hand of the card. 
Look what a serious matter this is. The Giant's Causeway on 
one hand, and Glendalough on the other. Who can deny that 
is not rank conspiracy. It was not with the Jacobins of France 
they were dealing, but with the beauties of Glendalough and 
the Giant's Causeway. The next place painted on the card 
was " Achill," in the West, and, lest Mr. O'Connell should be 
forgotten, here is a very nice picture of Derrynane Abbey ; then 
there are the words " Erin go Bragh " — a little dog, and one of 
the old Irish harps. I hope the day will never come when a 
jury will consider such allusions to the ancient glory and music 
of Ireland, which, it must be acknowledged, is the most touch- 
ing, the most pathetic and beautiful in Europe — I hope and 
say the day will never come when such allusions will be con- 
sidered by a jury as a conspiracy. 



m DEFENCE OF CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY. G57 

There was an explanation written to tlie card by Mr. O'Cal- 
laghan, and it was contended, as one reason for a repeal of the 
Union, that Ireland was the only nation in Europe that had 
not a parhament of its own. It was not true " that the Irish 
people never fought well except out of their own country ; they 
ought to remember Benburb, where the unfortunate Charles 
the First was backed by the Irish against his rebellious Eng- 
lish subjects, who ultimately brought his head to the block." 
Was it wrong to speak of the brave defence made by the 
Irish ? The treaty exists to this moment which proves what 
they did. And is it a crime to respect the memory of the 
brave ? I now come to the rules for the Repeal Wardens, 
upon which the Attorney-General commented so gravely. — 
They are taken from the rules of the old Catholic Associ- 
ation. 

[The learned gentleman read this document, and then con- 
tinued.] 

These rules are copied from those of the old association, and 
contain instructions to the Repeal Wardens to guard against 
illegal societies and all combinations against the law. 

[Mr. Whiteside then read the rules of the National Associationj 
from which the rules of the Loyal Repeal Association were formed, 
when 

Mr. Justice Burton requested of him to read again rule 2dj 
containing the denunciation of physical force. 

Mr. Whiteside then read the resolutions proposed by the libera- 
tor, and which were adopted in July, 1843, and to allow him some 
rest. 

Mr. Henn read the address to the people of Ireland. 

Mr. Whiteside, in continuation, adverted to the letter of Mr. S. 
Crawford, upholding our right to a federal parliament, which, he 
said, differed but very httle from the plan of the liberator for an 
independent legislature, and asked was it not an important fact 
that a gentleman of his property and station in the country should 
have made such a declaration. He then referred to Mr. O'Brien, 
and asked could they believe that such a man would have joined 
himself to any body whose purposes was illegal. The learned 
gentleman spoke of Mr. O'Connell's opposition to the Union from 



C58 Whiteside's speech 

1800 to the present time ; lie spoke of his denunciations of Louis 
Philippe and of the American slave-owners, and he asked could 
such a man have any design of appealing to France or America 
for assistance in the forcible attainment of his ends, and con- 
tinued.] 

I submit, on the whole of this part of the case, that is it 
impossible, looking to the publicity of their proceedings, the 
time their opinions were first taken up, the motives that led 
those people to adopt those opinions, the consistency with 
which they adhered to them — it is impossible to come to the 
conclusion from any one thing that has been adopted, and as 
Lord Erskine says, printed and given to the world for the last 
twelve months — ^it is impossible to come to the conclusion that 
those persons were banded together in a wicked and abomin- 
able conspiracy to accomplish their nefarious designs — their 
preconceived plot, by the wicked means specified in that in- 
dictment. 

Gentlemen of the jury, Mr. Attorney-General has deprecated, 
and deprecated strongly, the agitation of this question for a 
Repeal of the Union. He has told you that there is a fixed set- 
tlement forever of the constitutional relations between the two 
kingdoms. Gentlemen of the jury, the Irish people, or a large 
mass of them, are of opinion that they do labor under grievances 
— that there are causes and reasons why they should seek for a 
Repeal of this Union, and that you are not to condemn them 
on that ground. The universal people of Ireland look to the 
composition of the government — they see in it what I would 
call honorable and excellent men — but they see among that, 
government no one man connected with Ireland, to represent 
their wants, their wishes, or their grievances. Of self-legisla- 
tion they are deprived ; of self-government it would seem they 
are incompetent ; and it is a matter no less of surprise than 
of concern, that the country which gave birth to a Burke — 
the teacher of statesmen, the savior of states — cannot now 
furnish a single individual quaUfied to share in the administra- 
tion of the affairs of his native land. You may say, gentle- 
men, and with truth, that it is a matter of small moment who 
the individuals may be that compose the ministry of the day, 



IN DEFENCE OF CHAKLES GAVAN DUFFY. 659 

provided the people are prosperous, contented, and happy. 
But are the people of Ireland prosperous, contented, and hap- 
py ? Alas ! a large portion of our countrymen are unhappy, 
discontented, and destitute. They look around for the cause 
of their misfortunes ; they behold a country blessed by Provi- 
dence with means of wealth, but the strong man pines for a 
pittance ; for a daily sixpence, he strives with gaunt famine in 
the midst of fertility and plenty. Is he seditious if he ex- 
claims, in the language of indignant remonstrance, that he 
thinks a native parliament would give him the means of liveli- 
hood ? Is he criminal to wish for the means of life — is he 
seditious if he — knowing that his single voice would be un- 
heeded as the idle wind — should join with other men for the 
declaration of their common wants, their common grievances, 
and their common sufferings ? Is he, or are they conspirators 
because they think a local parliament might perhaps confer 
on them those blessings which they now sigh for ? They think, 
perhaps erroneously, that a resident aristocracy and a resident 
gentry would prove the source of industry and the means of 
wealth. They see their aristocracy absentees — ^they see mis- 
chief daily and hourly increasing; they think, perchance, a 
native parliament might induce them to reform, and are they 
conspirators because they say so ? They know, and true it is, 
the beauties of Ireland — if now, indeed, she has any— are not 
sufficient to induce her gentry or nobility to return. What 
are her beauties compared with the fascination of the impe- 
rial senate, and the glittering splendor of a court ? They see, 
and they believe that wealth is daily and hourly diminishing 
in this country. Before them they think there is a gloomy 
prospect and little hope. They transfer their eyes to this 
metropolis in which we stand — they see what a quick and 
sensitive people cannot shut then- eyes to. The dwellings of 
your nobility are converted into boarding houses and barracks 
— ^your stamp office is extinguished — your Linen Hall is waste 
— your Exchange deserted, your University forsaken, your 
Custom-house almost a poor-house. And, not long since, 
you may have read a debate with reference to the removal 
from an asylum, not far from where you sit, of the poor old 
Irish pensioners, who bravely served their country, to trans- 



660 Whiteside's speech 

plant them in their old age to another countrj, to save a 
miserable pittance. They see daily and hourly that the ex- 
penditure of money is withdrawn from the poorer country to 
the richer, on the ground of the appHcation of the hard rules 
of political economy, or the unbending principles of imperial 
centralization. They look to their parhament house — and the 
Union has improved it into a bank. In their eyes it stands a 
monument of past glory and present degradation. The glo- 
rious labors of our gifted countrymen within those walls are 
not yet forgotten. 

The works of the understanding do not quickly perish. The 
verses of Homer have lived two thousand five hundred years 
without the loss of a syllable or a letter, whUe cities, and tem- 
ples, and palaces have fallen into decay. The eloquence of 
Greece tells us of the genius of her sons, and the freedom 
which produced it. We forget her ruin in the recollection of 
her greatness ; nor can we read even now, without emotion, 
the exalted sentiments of her inspired children, poured forth 
in their exquisite language, to save the expiring liberties of 
their country. Perhaps their genius had a resurrectionary 
power, and in later days quickened their degenerate posterity 
and roused them from the lethargy of slavery to the activity 
of freedom. We, too, have had among us, in better times, 
men who approached the greatness of antiquity. The imper- 
ishable record of that eloquence will ever keep alive in our 
hearts a zeal for freedom and a love for country. The com- 
prehensive genius of Flood, the more than mortal energy of 
Grattan, the splendor of Bushe, the learning of Ball, the noble 
simplicity of Burgh, the Demosthenic fire of Plunket, and the 
eloquence of Curran rushing from the heart, wUl sound in the 
ears of their countrymen forever. They toiled to save the an- 
cient constitution of Ireland, but wit, learning, eloquence, and 
genius, lost their power over the souls of men. With one 
great exception, these, our distinguished countrymen, have 
passed away, but their memories cannot perish with them. 
Their eloquence and their names will be remembered by the 
grateful patriot while genius is honored or patriotism revered. 

Lastly, on this subject of the Union, the Irish people say 
the imperial parliament have not attended to their pecuHar 



IN DEFENCE OF CHAELES GAVAN DUFFY. 661 

wants. They say our character has been misunderstood, and 
sometimes slandered: our yices have been magnified into 
crimes, and the crimes of a few have been visited upon the 
nation. The Irish, " the mere Irish," have been derided as 
creatures of impulse, without a settled understanding, a reason- 
ing power, a moral sense. They have their faults, God knows 
they have — I grieve to say it — but their faults are redeemed 
by the splendor of their virtues. They have rushed into this 
agitation with ardor, because it is their nature when they feel 
strongly to act boldly and speak passionately, ascribe their 
excesses to their enthusiasm, and forgive. RecoUect tiiat same 
enthusiasm has borne them triumphant over fields of peril and 
glory — impelled them to shed their dearest blood and offer 
their gaUant lives in defence of the liberties of England. The 
broken chivalry of France attests the value of that fiery en- 
thusiasm and marks its power ; nor is their high spirit useful 
only in the storm of battle ; it cheers their almost broken 
hearts, hghtens their load of misery, when it is almost insup- 
portable, sweetens that bitter cup of poverty which thousands 
of your countrymen are doomed to drink. 

"What, that is truly great, without enthusiasm has been won 
for man? The glorious works of art, the immortal produc- 
tions of the understanding, the incredible ardor of heroes and 
patriots for the salvation of mankind, have been prompted by 
enthusiasm, and nothing else. Cold and duU were our exist- 
ence here below unless the deep passions of the soul, stirred 
by enthusiasm, were summoned into action for gTeat and noble 
purposes — the overwhelming of vice, wickedness, tyranny — the 
securing and supporting of the world's virtue — the world's 
hope — the world's freedom. The hand of Omnipotence, by 
whose touch this island started into existence from amid the 
waters that surround it, stamped upon its people noble quali- 
ties of the intellect and the heart. Directed to the wise pur- 
poses for which heaven designed them, they wiU yet redeem — 
exalt — regenerate Ireland. 

[A loud burst of applause followed the concluding sentence, 
which was responded to by the people in the haU, continued for 
several minutes. 



662 Whiteside's speech 

Mr. Moore said that his friend Mr. Whiteside being very much 
exhausted, begged their lordships would permit him to postpone 
the remainder of his address (as he had not yet concluded all he 
had to say) to the following morning. 

Their lordships at once acceded to this application, and the court 
adjourned.] 



At the next sitting of the court, February 2, Mr. Whiteside rose 
to resume his address to the jury, but was interrupted by the Chief 
Justice, who begged he would wait for a moment, and then pro- 
ceeded to observe : I am not now addressing myself to you, Mr. 
Whiteside, but I would wish the people in the gallery would 
attend to what the Court feel right to say with regard to the im- 
propi'iety which took place yesterday evening. A great deal of 
cheering and improper noise took place — a just tribute due to the 
distinguished talents of Mr. Whiteside, but a great indecorum, and 
improperly committed before the Court. Such a thing cannot be 
allowed again ; and those who are disposed so to signify their ap- 
probation, or disapprobation, of what takes place in this court, 
must be informed that the court is not the place to show any signs 
of such feeling ; and they must hold their tongues, and keep quiet. 
Mr. Whiteside then resumed his address. He said — 

I shall draw your attention now, gentlemen, to the charge 
in this indictment on the subject of the arbitration courts. 
This single accusation is spread over a great portion of the 
indictment, and much dwelt upon by my friend, the Attorney- 
General, in his address to you. I apprehend it would astonish 
you very much if any of you were prevented on the ground 
that you recommended one of your brother jurors not to go 
law. You must recollect the thing to be done, and advised to 
be done, and how it is to be done^to see if the act itself be 
legal, and if the means adopted for carrying out of the act be 
legal also. I submit that it is both a religious and moral duty, 
if possible, to compromise the subject matter of litigation be- 
tween two parties, and you will find it in that book, which I 
am sure is a high authority in your estimation. Next it is a 
moral duty. In Paley's Moral Philosophy, entitled " Litiga- 
tion," you will find these words : 



IN DEFENCE OF CHAELES GAYAN DUFFY. 6G3 

"But since it is supposed to be undertaken simply with a view to the 
ends of justice and society, the prosecutor of the action is bound to con- 
fine himself to the cheapest process which will accomplish these ends, as 
well as to consent to any peaceable expedient for the same purpose ; as 
to a reference in which the arbitrators can do what the law cannot, divide 
the damage when the fault is mutual, or to a compounding of the dispute 
by accepting a compensation in the gross without entering into articles 
and items, which it is often very difficult to adjust separately." 

Therefore, the thing recommended to be done is both a re- 
hgious and moral duty. The law itself respects arbitration 
and encourages it by every means, and it has occurred fre- 
quently in our experience, that while a suit was pending, and 
after great expense was brought before a judge and jury, it 
has been suggested by counsel or the court that the subject 
matter of that dispute. shall be referred by consent to discreet 
men to adjudicate upon it. The statute law of the land re- 
cognizes arbitration. By the sixteenth WiUiam III., it is pro- 
vided that it shall be lawful to refer matters to arbitration. 
By two later statutes, one that is called by the name of the 
learned gentleman that passed it — Bigot's Act, 3 and 4 Yic, 
there are provisions introduced to facilitate arbitration and 
compel the attendance of witnesses. By the fifth and sixth 
William IV., it is also recognized, and by the fifth and sixth 
Victoria, where the matter in dispute is under twenty pounds, 
the arbitration awards are reheved from stamp duty. Tlie 
statute law recommends arbitration to be adopted where it 
makes no positive enactment on the subject. 

[The learned gentleman referred to the Friendly Societies Act, 
and several authorities to show that arbitration was recognized, 
and proceeded.] 

Thus, gentlemen, you perceive that religion and morahty sup- 
port and sanction, and that the statutes assist in enforcing arbi- 
tration—that arbitration to rest exclusively on the consent 
of the parties. 

[Having referred to Blackstone's Commentaries, in support of 
this proposition, he proceeded.] 

Now gentlemen, to apply this matter to the parole evidence be- 
fore us. This evidence consisted of the testimony of Hoyen- 
don, a policeman. He stated that he was an inspector of poilce ; 



664 Whiteside's speech 

that he went into a reading room at the Black Eock ; he was 
received with kindness ; there were no professional men there 
in wig or gown ; no oath was administered ; the parties pro- 
ceeded solely, and singly, by consent of the parties, and they 
disclaimed all other jurisdiction. On consent, and consent 
alone, they acted ; two parties appeared before them, and that 
vital suit was referred to Kingstown, but whether it was settled 
or not I know not. 

Referring to the doctrines I have stated, it is plain that on 
consent, and consent only, did the parties presume to act. To 
advise men not to go to law is no crime, but a moral duty, and 
that several should agree in the recommendation, in the per- 
formance of a moral duty, is not a crime. The -thing to be 
done is not illegal, and the question is whether the mode in 
which it is done is illegal, to carry out the common plot or 
conspiracy laid in the indictment. Four or five documents 
were read by the Attorney-General, but they proved nothing 
— one being the form of summons served by one party on the 
other. I tell you that if a matter was referred to you by 
two brother jurors in the box, you must give, and it is the 
usual practice for gentlemen when a matter is referred, to give 
and sign the same form of notice apprising the parties they 
are to come before them on a particular day, and refer the 
matter in dispute to them, so that allegation is good for 
nothing. 

As to the other document, the form of award, it shows 
nothing but how a proper award may be made. The statute 
law prescribes that if the subject matter of arbitration be 
twenty pounds and upwards, the award must be stamped, that 
the revenues of the country may be protected. The form of 
carrying out the award shows only this — that where there is 
a consent to refer a dispute to A B., here is the form of award 
in which the consent can be carried into execution ; and the 
directions read state, you are to take notice, that the arbitra- 
tors have no power, authority, or jurisdiction, except by con- 
sent of such parties as came before them. That was the last 
rule adopted by the Association ; and the proposition of Dr. 
Gray, that any person that would not abide by the decision of 



IN DEFENCE OF CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY. 665 

« 

the arbitrators should be expelled the Association, was not 
adopted. 

There is nothing more in this part of the case but this a 

recommendation to the parties to consent to arbitration. That 
consent is the root of all references to arbitration, and the 
thing being a moral thing to do, and the means being legal, I 
submit that this novel, this unprecedented, extraordinary 
ground of accusation cannot be rehed upon in the present case. 
It is said you did more — you not only induced parties to refer 
suits to arbitration, but those justices that had been dis- 
missed were to be selected as arbitrators. That has been most 
strongly pressed by the Attorney- General, and has been over 
and over again urged. I admit frankly that it was said by 
Mr. O'Connell and others that they hoped that those persons, 
being dismissed justices residing in some parts of the coun- 
try, should be selected or appointed to act on behalf of the 
people ; and they hoped the time would come when the people 
would be at liberty to elect their magistrates. It arose from 
a matter merely accidental, and never was intended or con- 
templated by those who became Repealers. It was long 
afterward that the act was done which led to the appointment 
of these ex-justices as arbitrators, and it was not the result of 
a common design. It arose from the act of the government. 
They saw that a number of gentlemen of high respectability 
attended these Repeal meetings, and it is quite plain, from 
reading the correspondence of the Lord Chancellor, that he 
did not consider they had thereby done an illegal act. 

In his letter of the 28th of May, 1843, he says that it had 
been his earnest determination not to interfere with expression 
of opinion by any magistrate in respect to the Repeal of the 
Union, although, from his arrival in this country, he felt it to 
be inconsistent with his duty to appoint to the commission of 
the peace, any one who was pledged to the support of that 
measure ; but he afterward assigns as his reason for dismiss- 
ing them, that after the discussions in the House of Lords, and 
the declarations made in parliament by Sir R. Peel, in answer 
to the plain and distinct question of Lord Jocelyn, he felt it 
his duty to ask whether they intended to attend any more of 
these meetings, and if so, to dismiss them. That letter plainly 



666 Whiteside's speech 

showed tliat attending these meetings originally was not an 
illegal act, and his letter was then merely a warning. 

[The learned counsel quoted several high legal authorities to 
support his argument, and continued :] 

Gentlemen, I think the question of arbitration is so far set 
at rest. I have but one remark more to make, and that is, 
that before you hold anything to be criminal, merely because 
it is novel, you will ask and require from the Crown to show 
you some plain, clear expression in a book of law constituting 
the criminality of that act. 

[Mr. Whiteside referred to the parliamentary debates upon the 
question of the Union, and read extracts from the speeches of 
Grattan, Plunket, Bushe, Saurin, etc., to prove the fact that the 
day would come when the Union would be re- discussed and re- 
agitated. The learned counsel proceeded:] 

Gentlemen of the jury, it has been observed by the Attor- 
ney-General, — but very wrongly— that the condition of Ire- 
land at the time the Volunteers were established, warranted 
them in the resolutions which they adopted, but that the state 
of the law now does not justify a similar line of conduct. His 
argument was, that Ireland then had a parliament perfectly in- 
dependent, and that England obtained, by the enactment of 
sixth George I., the power to treat her as a dependent country ; 
and, therefore, the Volunteers were justified. But the argu- 
ment fails. 

Lord Coke, in Fourth Institutes, said that it was in the 
power of the English parliament to bind the people of Ireland, 
but not unless Ireland was expressly included by name in the 
act. This was, then, the state of the law in the time of the 
Volunteers. That Ireland was bound by an Enghsli act, when 
named in it, therefore the Volunteers acted against the letter 
of the law, though they did not against its spirit. "When we 
had a parHament here— which was deprived of its authority — 
if it were just to adopt resolutions condemnatory of the Eng- 
lish act which deprived that parliament of its power, how much 
more reasonable is it to adopt resolutions in the spirit of those 
of the Volunteers, when we have lost that parliament, and aU 



IN DEFENCE OF CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY. 667 

the benefits of a resident legislature. I find, in lookinf^ af^ain 
at the resolutions, that an ancestor of my friend Mr. Tombs 
attested, by his own signature, that it was illegal and against 
the spirit of the law to attempt to bind the people of Ireland 
by an English act of parliament. 

The Attorney-General has said that the act of Union was a 
great and final settlement ; but that assertion destroys the 
very principle upon which the Union rests. If he says that 
an act of parliament contains a provision for its finahty, then 
the Yolunteers of '82 made no mistake. They found that by 
the sixth of George I. the parliament of England had pre- 
sumed to bind the people of Ireland, and they said we must 
have that act abandoned — repealed — and they succeeded. 
The parliaments of both countries passed the Declaration of 
Rights, and the Irish Lord Lieutenant assented to it — adopted 
it — and called it, in the language of the Attorney-General 
here, a great and final settlement ; yet afterward, the twenty- 
third of George III. was passed for the purpose of removing 
all doubts as to the right of the parliament of England being 
sufficient to bind the people of Ireland. Yet this eternal 
foundation — this so often asserted finality, was destroyed in 
1800. It isicurious,too, that the act of Union contains no pro- 
vision that its finahty should not be discussed ; and, therefore, 
the Attorney's argument against the right of the traversers to 
do so, fails. 

[He then read an extract from Molyneux's book on the state of 
Ireland. The learned gentleman then quoted the passage in which 
the writer questioned the right of the English government to de- 
prive the Irish people of their ancient privileges, which they had 
possessed for five hundred years, and proceeded to say:] 

The English were so unable to get over the arguments con- 
tained in that book, that they ordered it to be burned by the 
common hangman — a circumstance which increases very much 
my estimation of the work. 

I will next call your attention to the consideration of what 
Mr. O'Connell has asserted about the revival of the Irish 
parliament, and I will first, however, dispose of his proposition 
for the "Eenewed action of the Irish parhament." Mr. 



668 WHITESIDE S SPEECH 

O'Connell in that extraordinary document sets forth the whole 
of the Ii-ish population, and states his opinion, that household 
suffrage is the best. Why, gentlemen, that is the suffrage we 
have, at present, in Dublin. Every man who has a house 
worth ten pounds possesses a vote, and there are very few 
houses in Dublin that are not worth ten pounds. 

The Duke of Kichmond, who was examined by Mr. Erskine 
on the trial of Hardy, was of opinion that the whole system 
of the franchise was corrupt, and that every man who had not 
committed a crime ought to have a vote ; and that there ought 
to be annual parliaments, vote by ballot, etc., all of which was 
very well for a duke. And in his letter to Colonel Sharman 
he (the Duke of Bichmond) states that he is of opinion that 
the two nations should have but one parhament, provided the 
sovereign of England should reside a reasonable time in this 
country, and hold her imperial parhament in it, which he said 
her Majesty could do with a scrape of her pen — and, gentle- 
men, I hope she may. It is a positive insult to the under- 
standing of any man to say that such a state of things would 
not be a positive benefit to the country, improve her trade, her 
manufactures, and her resources. Even our own profession 
would be benefited by it ; for the residence of her most gra- 
cious Majesty in this country would be no bar to her loyal sub- 
jects to go to law. 

The Attorney-General adopted the Socratic doctrine in his 
argument with us : he put questions to us. Now, I am not 
to be held accountable for the doctrines propounded by others 
who have spoken before me. But can it be said, as was al- 
leged, that it is revolutionary to state that every town possess- 
ing ten thousand inhabitants should have a representative ? 
Why, that is but the principle of the Eeform Bill. Mr. O'Con- 
nell also says that every man who marries shall have a vote. 
I think there can be no objection on that score — and that the 
conspiracy on that ground may be abandoned ; and certainly 
such a question could not be submitted to a more favorable 
jury, for you are all married. Has Mr. O'Connell said that her 
Majesty was to be pulled from her throne — the House of Peers 
to be aboHshed — and the House of Commons extinguished ? 
No. What then has he done? He has been guilty of the 



IN DEFENCE OF CHARLES GAYAN DUFFY. 669 

monstrous proceeding of extending the royal prerogative ! The 
Attorney-General — the legal champion of the Crown — charges 
it as a crime against Mr. O' Connell that he said the Queen has 
a larger, wider, and more extended prerogative than her Ma- 
jesty possesses. Where is the authority in which it is laid 
down that the man who propounded such a proposition is to be 
charged as a conspirator ? What authority is there for say- 
ing that Mr. Duffy, Mr. Steele, or any one else, is to be 
charged with conspiracy, because when they heard such a 
proposition they did not say to the person propounding it, 
cite us some authority ; cite us your case. Suppose Mr. 
O'Connell, instead of saying that parliament should be re- 
formed — that a parliament should be given to Ireland — said, 
sir, I am of opinion that parliament is a humbug — a nuisance ; 
that her Majesty has a perfect right to rule, independent of 
either House of parliament. Why, what would be the conse- 
quence? I cite a case in point. 

A celebrated writer in England wrote a book, in which he 
said that the House of Commons might be dispensed with. 
That was voted to be a scandalous and seditious libel by the 
House, and the Attorney-General of the day w-as directed to 
prosecute the writer. He was accordingly prosecuted, and the 
case is to be found in Peak's cases in the King's Bench. It is 
called the King v. Beeves. Lord Kenyon there laid it down 
that the power of free discussion was the right of every sub- 
ject of this country — a right to the free exercise of which we 
were indebted, more than to any other claimed by EngHshmen, 
for the enjoyment of all the blessings we possess — for the Be- 
formation — the revolution — and our emancipation from the 
tyranny of the Stuarts, etc., etc., — and that in a free country 
like this the productions of a political writer should not be 
hardly dealt with. He directed the jury to read through the 
whole book, and then form their judgment on the entire Avork. 
That was his charge, and do you wonder that the people of 
England should be so much attached to the judicial system 
under which they hve, when you hear laid down by the Lord 
Chief Justice of England a doctrine so constitutional — so 
favorable to freedom and the right of the subject as that 
doctrine. The jury in that case retired ; they had the book 



670 Whiteside's speech 

before tliem, and thoiigli they decided that the book was im- 
proper, yet, nevertheless, they thought that he was not 
actuated by any bad intention ; and Lord Kenyon said he ap- 
proved of their verdict. That was the doctrine propounded 
from the bench, and the jury having looked with the eye of 
men of sense, qualified their verdict by saying they deprecated 
what was said by the defendant, the mode in which he con- 
ducted his argument; but they found their verdict of not 
guilty, and the Lord Chief Justice said he approved of their 
decision. Therefore, if Mr. O'Connell said her Majesty may 
dispense with the House of Lords, he would be safe according 
to the authority of that case. If he said the Queen might 
dispense with the House of Commons, he would be safe ac- 
cording to the authority of that case. But what has he said ? 
That the Lish peerage might be restored to the position in 
which it once stood — that the House of Lords would be 
Protestant, and that the House of Commons ought to be 
restored. 

In England the right of free discussion is the right of Eng- 
hshmen, and I put it to your good sense to say whether the 
arguments of the writer of that book, or Mr. O'Connell's ar- 
gument is more consistent with the principles of the constitution 
under which we hve ? 

Gentlemen, the power and prerogative of the Crown to issue 
writs seems to have been a very extensive power — at least, as 
it was formerly exercised. In the reign of Ehzabeth, she, 
wishing to have a majority, sent the writs to only fifty boroughs 
and left out ten. There arie very remarkable instances where 
the Crown have withheld writs from places entitled to send 
representatives to parhament as to numbers. Looking to the 
parliamentary history, we find the most elaborate discourse 
ever spoken. It was by Sir John Davies, the Attorney-Gen- 
eral to King James the First, and was to be found in " Leland's 
History of Ireland." In that discourse you will see the right 
King James the First had for what he did do, to create forty 
boroughs in the north of Ireland in one day. It was ques- 
tioned in that parliament whether he had a right to do so — 
the question was discussed — carried over to England, and it 
was decided in favor of his right, and those persons so elected 



m DEFENCE OF CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY. 671 

under his writs sat in parliament to the period of the Union. 
The last instance of the kind was the issuing of a writ for the 
borough of Newark, and it was decided in the House of Com- 
mons by a very large majority that the sovereign had a right 
to create the borough. 

Mr. O'Connell's argument was this, that the sovereign has 
still the power to create boroughs in England. Chitty, in his 
work on the prerogatives of the Crown, enters into that ques- 
tion, and says there was nothing to take away the prerogative 
of the Crown in that respect. Then, if it does exist, the Union 
is in the power of the sovereign, and that learned writer says it 
is in the power of the Crown to create boroughs as they did 
before. The learned counsel said, thei'e are two general con- 
sider.iuons that I shall advert to on the subject matter of this 
case : that is, whether the general conduct pursued by the de- 
fendants showed they were governed by motives that actuate 
men engaged in a conspiracy, and whether the general con- 
duct pursued by the government showed that the government 
beheved they were engaged in a conspiracy. How did the de- 
fendants act? Everything they did, everything they wrote, 
everything they spoke was before the public ; every morning 
their speeches appeared in the frigid Saunders, and at night in 
the fiery Pilot, and they sent n-p to the government proof of 
their guilt, and evidence for their conviction. They are spoken 
openly and in daylight, those dark projects, those treasonable 
designs, these hidden contrivances ; their rules are given to the 
public — they employed the printer of the Crown to print them ; 
and they declared their object to be the peaceable organization 
of the people — to concentrate popular opinion, and carry out 
the objects they had in view, and that was a legitimate and 
proper object. What was the conduct of the government? 
Did that government show they beheved that there existed in 
this country a conspiracy, beginning in March, and continu- 
ing up to October ? If those pubhcations were seditious, and 
proof of a conspiracy ; if they were incentives to rebellion, and 
calculated to poison the pubhc mind, and infect popular feel- 
ing in this country, for two whole years the court sat in which 
the Attorney-General had the right from his high station, to do 
what he thought proper in the defence of the law and consti- 



672 Whiteside's speech 

tution, on any of those publications that are now asserted to 
be extraordinary seditions, and why have they not been prose- 
cuted by him ? And I retort on him the argument he used, 
that if it were mischievous in those defendants, or any of them, 
to spread poison through the land, it is more mischievous in 
the champion of the government, the sentinel of the state, not 
at once to come forward and stop the mischief when it might 
be stopped. 

Parliament sat until the month of August, and I call your 
attention to the discussion to which the Attorney-General re- 
ferred — the question put by Lord Jocelyn to the minister, and 
the evasive answer given by that minister. I call upon you to 
recollect that up to the' latter end of August that parhament 
sat, and nothing was more easy, than for this ministry, com- 
manding a majority of that House, to say — " We put down the 
Catholic Association by the statute law — we put down unlaw- 
ful combination — we put down the Protestants of the North ; 
and give us now only a short act of parliament to put down 
those who disturbed the public peace. They were not called 
upon to do it, and they did not do it. They remain quiet until 
parliament breaks up — his Excellency, for whom I have the 
highest respect — retires from Ireland for the cultivation of 
those elegant tastes with which we know he is so familiar— 
the Chancellor is on the banks of the Thames, musing on law, 
and reading of Pope — the noble Secretary for Ireland has got 
into some quiet and lonely dell — the Attorney-General has 
escaped from the dehghts of St. Stephen's Green to enjoy the 
tranquillity of home — the Solicitor-General is indulging in the 
most agreeable anticipations of the future. The Prime Minis- 
ter is gone to Drayton, her Majesty to sea — Ireland is left to 
go head-forward to destruction. The conspiracy is raging 
through the land — all the ministers leave the country just 
before the explosion is to take place. The meeting at Clontarf 
is announced, and how shall I describe it ? — as a black cloud 
hung on the declivity of the mountain — a dangerous activity 
on the part of the government succeeds a dangerous silence, 
couriers fly here and there to summon our English function- 
aries. They say, here is sedition ; where is his Excellency ; 
where is the Lord Chancellor ? Here is a matter of political 



IN DEFENCE OF CHARLES GAYAN DUFFY. G73 

expediency. Where is the noble Secretary? True, wlien 
pressed, the Attorney-General grew ardent, the Solicitor-Gen- 
eral apprehensive : they were, I beUeve, seen together on the 
sea-shore, straining their eyes toward the coast of England, 
and they were heard to exclaim : 

*' Ye gods, assimilate both time and space, 
And make two lawyers happy." 

They come, they come, the Privy Council is assembled. I 
cannot tell you, gentlemen, what passed, or what was said, at 
the first meeting of the august body ; the Eobertson or Gibbon 
of future times may tell. I'll tell you what they do : they do 
nothing, the do-nothing policy prevailed ; and on Friday they 
separated, haviag done nothing, with the happy consciousness 
that they had done their duty. Refreshed by sleep, they reas- 
sembled on Saturday. They pondered, they composed, they 
publish, and the proclamation is issued at three o'clock forbid- 
ding the meeting, for which meeting there were thousands on 
the march almost at that very moment, to attend next morn- 
ing. The commander-in-chief receives his order, and pre- 
pares for battle ; the cannon is loaded, the bayonet is fixed, 
the cavalry mount, and forth marches our victorious army in 
all " the pride, pomp, and circumstance " of glorious war. It 
was a glorious sight to see. The advance guard by a brisk 
movement pushed on and seized Aldborough House. The 
light infantry, protected by cavalry, rush forward, the army are 
placed in position, the pigeon-house bristled with cannon and 
looked awful, and the police skirmished, and the commander- 
in-chief — what did he do? It is stated that Sir Edward 
Blakeney at one o'clock rode down to inspect the troops, ap- 
proved of what was done, rode home and dined ! and if he 
does not get a peerage for the happy deeds he did that day, 
justice will not be done to Ireland. Such a triumph was 
never achieved since the renowned days of Irish history, when 
Brian Boroihme buckled on his mighty sword and smote the 
Danes. 

To be serious, was that a wise, consistent, judicious course 
of policy to make the law understood, respected, and obeyed ? 
"Was it not the last pohcy that should be resorted to for the 



674 WHITESIDE'S SPEECH 

purpose of governing so peculiar a people as the Irish ? The 
meeting at Donnybrook was not forbidden ; the Clontarf meet- 
ing was to be put down by the bayonet. WUl constitutional 
knowledge be much edified by the body of that most interest- 
ing document, that learned and great performance, the procla- 
mation, which it fulminated at the very last moment, when the 
meeting is on the point of being held, although other meetings 
of the same character and nature have been endured by that 
same government ? Do the Irish laws vary with season, and is 
that law in June that is not law in October ? For the Attor- 
ney-General said the meeting at Donnybrook was the type of 
all the other meetings that were held ; and I put it to your 
own unbiased nature if it were ; if the government saw the 
men that went to that meeting, passing by the Castle Gate, 
and knew it was held, and were aware of it ; they read the 
speeches, they had their reporters there, and knew everything 
that passed, — why not then put down those meetings ? Heated, 
inflamed, they see an enthusiastic people in pursuit of a dar- 
ling object. Which are the most blamable, the people for 
holding those meetings that they did not see denounced or put 
down by the law, or the ministry that stood by and witnessed 
the folly, and knew of the madness that allowed the mischief 
to prevail and spread over the country until it was to burst 
forth Mke a fiery volcano, and sweep the country iu a torrent 
of devastation? and then they call upon you to convict my 
cHent. If you convict my chent, you convict the government. 
If you desire to acquit the government, you will acquit my 
client. 

These men are chosen by her Majesty to govern this great 
empire, the peace of the country is intrusted to their hands. 
Your lives and property, it is asserted, are in jeopardy ; that a 
black conspiracy has existed in this country since the month 
of March, that they knew it, and were aware of every act 
done in pursuance of that conspiracy ; they did no act to put 
it down ; they allowed the seditious speeches to proceed, and 
men.to harangue the people ; they read them, they noted them, 
but they took no proceedings, they asked no aid from parlia- 
ment to stop them, and now they want to get themselves clear 
of all possible blame, not meaning to say that the prosecution 



m DEFENCE OF CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY. 675 

is not a bona fide prosecution, but at tlie last moment they try 
these men as guilty of an illegal act. In the ordinary course 
of human affairs, the most powerful and conclusive admissions 
will be drawn from the conduct of parties, but in cases of poli- 
tical conspiracy between the Crown and the subject, it is for 
you to take care, and great care, that it should not be in the 
power of the government to-day to say a certain thing by their 
conduct, as significant as their acts and declarations is lawful, 
and not to be censured ; and then to allow them to draw to- 
gether all the incautious language, all the violence that several 
public men have fallen into for a period of ten months, and 
put them all in an indictment, to overload the memory, and 
confuse the understanding by the mass of paper that has been 
put upon the table ; and to tell twelve honest men, who are 
governed by no other desire than to do justice, to speU out of 
the whole a black conspiracy, to subvert the monarchy, to up- 
root the constitution that you have sworn to protect, and to 
take away the prerogative of the Crown. I take the liberty 
to say this, that it is impossible for you to beheve, nor do I 
beheve, that the learned gentlemen I see before me ever 
thought there was a conspiracy. I don't believe they thought 
it amounted to a conspiracy. They did not during all that 
time prosecute for a conspiracy. It is unworthy of the great 
and very distinguished government which prosecutes in the 
present instance, to direct the thunders of their indignation 
against the enthusiastic young author of the " Memory of the 
Dead." Let the Solicitor-General tell how the government of 
England punished Mr. Moore for poems not a whit more m- 
dicative of conspiracy (if conspiracy indeed there be) than the 
stanzas which have been read to you. Let him tell you how 
Moore was punished for writing such lines as these in the 
" Lamentation of Aughrim :" 

Could the chain for an instant be riven 

Which tyranny flung round us then. 
Oh ! 'tis not in man nor in heaven 

To let tyranny bind it again. 
But 'tis past ; and though blazoned in story 

The name of our victor may be, 
Accursed is the march of the glory 

Which treads o'er the hearts of the free. 



676 Whiteside's speech 

He will tell you hovr the bard was punished for perming the 
song of " Kourke, Prince of Breffiiy," and inserting in it such 
hues as these : 

Already the curse is upon her, 

And strangers her valleys profane : 
They come to divide — to dishonor ; 

And tyrants they long will remain. 

But onward ! — the green banner rearing, 

Go flash every sword to the hilt : 
On our side is Virtue and Erin ; 

On theirs is the Saxon and Guilt. 

Yes, gentlemen, the author of the " Adventures of an Irish 
Gentleman in search of a KeKgion," and of the " Memoirs of 
Lord Edward Fitzgerald," was punished. But how was he 
punished ? He was punished by a pension from the English 
government — yes, Moore was punished with a pension for his 
sedition ; and you, gentlemen of the jury, are now solicited to 
bring a verdict of " guilty " against the writer of this song, 
and to declare your conviction that the emanation of a mind, 
young, ardent, poetical, and imaginative, though mistaken, 
was written in furtherance of a common plan and design of 
the most infamous nature ! However ardent the youth of Ire- 
land may be, it should never be forgotten of them that they 
never forgot their loyalty to their sovereign, even when in 
1715 and 1745 the best blood of England and of Scotland be- 
dewed the scaffold, in consequence of the mad and well-nigh 
successful, attempt to dislodge the present royal family from 
the throne of these countries, the Irish were faithful even to 
the death. Are not the free subjects of a free state to be per- 
mitted to raise their voices in constitutional protestation and 
remonstrance, when they think that their interests are endan- 
gered or injured? Scott, the most cautious of writers, was 
once called upon to decide between his attachment to liis party 
and his love of Scotland. The British ministry declared their 
intention to introduce, regardless of the feehngs of the Scot- 
tish people, who considered that their interests were vitally 
concerned, a bUl in reference to the joint-stock banks of Scot- 
land. The Scotch thought that they would be injured by the 
contemplated bill ; and Sir "Walter Scott, fired with indigna- 



m DEFENCE OF CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY. 677 

tion at the idea that the act should be introduced without con- 
sulting the wishes and feelings of his countrymen, wrote un- 
der the signature of " Malachi Malgagrouther," a series of let- 
ters, which excited such a flame of indignation in the country 
from north to south, from east to west, that the minister of the 
Crown was obliged to fly away, with his obnoxious bill under 
his arm, just as the Attorney-General should be forced to fly 
off with his monster indictment on his shoulder, for it would 
not fit under any man's arm. 

But hear how Sir Walter Scott expressed his indignation. 

[The learned counsel read an extract from page 320 of " Mala- 
chi Malgagrouther's Letters.] 

The British minister failed, for the Scotch said, " we must 
get our joint-stock banks," aye, and they did succeed in 
getting them ; and are we not a country as good as Scot- 
land, that succeeded in wringing from the British minister 
their rights in what they considered a mercantile point 
of view? Was that to be done in a cold and servile man- 
ner? Do you think Scott did it in that cold and mawk- 
ish manner, and said, as we lawyers say, " Oh ! I respectfully 
submit." Not he ; he too well knew that he might as 
weU be whistling jigs to a milestone, and therefore he 
went boldly about the task, and Sir Walter Scott succeeded 
in making his country, which contained about one quarter 
of the number of inhabitants that Ireland did — he succeeded, 
I say, in making her happy, respectable, and great, while we 
remain a poor pitiful^ pelting province. I am not ashamed to 
say this. I hope the people of Ireland wiU combine in the one 
cause, and that is the cause of their common country, for the 
common good of that country, for the good of this ancient 
kingdom, that she may once again flourish in the world's his- 
tory. Gentlemen, I now come to the shuffling of the indict- 
ment, and what do you think the Attorney-General rehes on a 
part of it for? Why, a letter signed " Delcassian" in the Na- 
tion newspaper. Delcassian treason of course. This letter 
has reference to one of the lakes in Ireland called " Lake Bel- 
videre ;" it says " we don't want lakes at all ; let us have loughs, 
and then it wiU look like Irish ; we want no Italian or German 
names at all ; let us have Irish names :" and it farther stated 



678 Whiteside's speech 

that " Eoderick, one of the last Kings of Ireland, died on an 
island in that lake." That's conspiracy. But I cannot see any- 
thing very wrong in that ; and I venture to assert that if every 
reader of the Nation in existence was put on the table, and 
asked by virtue of your oath, Do you remember the letter of 
Delcassian ? he would boldly say, On my oath, I do not remem- 
ber a word about it. And that is a part of the conspiracy 
charged in the indictment, and sought to be palmed on you as 
treason, along with 011am Fodlham, and the other old gentle- 
men, who lived in his days. That is one part of the charge ; 
and now I come to that which they rely on for a conviction ! 
The subject is from the same paper, the Nation, of the 25th of 
April. This is headed, " Something is Coming, aye, for good 
or ill, something is coming." 

[He proceeded to read the article, commenting generally on it 
as he proceeded, and said the article was calculated to conciliate 
all parties, for it should be remembered that there were poHtical 
storms as well as physical hurricanes.] 

It said that coolness was the only thing. Is there any- 
thing, I ask, inflammatory in advising the people to be cool 
and steady ? I can't see there is, although the Attorney- 
General wishes you to beheve there is. 

The people are sober now ; and I respectfully submit there is 
nothing of conspiracy in that. Let them be kind and concili- 
ating to the Protestants; neither can I see anything in that ; 
but every person don't view things in the same light as the 
Attorney -General does. I don't think it is wrong in a writer 
to endeavor to conciliate Protestants, because he well knew 
there were 800,000 good Presbyterians in the north of Ireland 
who were strong-minded men, who reasoned well ; and who, 
once they took up a subject, and were convinced of the 
u.tLlity of it, would not cease luitil their object was accom- 
plished. The writer knew the difficulty of getting these men 
out, and therefore he wanted to conciliate them. And I don't 
see anything wrong in that, for their assistance would be val- 
uable to the Eepeal cause ; and, let me ask, what other mode 
could be adopted ? It was recommended by Mr. O'Connell ; it 
was recommended by Sir Walter Scott, and with effect ; and 
this was the ground the Crown went on for a conviction, be- 



IN DEFENCE OF CHABLES GAVAN DUFFY. 679 

cause the writer in the Nation endeavored to conciliate his 
Protestant brethren. They (the Nation) say they differ from 
Mr. O'Connell, and, I ask you, is that a sign of conspiracy ? 
I say the newspapers do not speak the conclusions of the asso- 
ciation, and, therefore, there is no conspiracy between them, 
and you had that from Jackson, who proved it on this table, 
and yet the Attorney-General wants to put that ostensible 
meaning on it, but you are not to give it a meaning not war- 
ranted by the facts. The next article they rely on is the arti- 
cle headed " Our Nationality," a thing that will be always ob- 
jected to by our brethren at the other side of the water, or, 
at least, by the ministry, and the only thing they set out in 
that is the word " clutched." It is rather curious that Mr. 
Barrett used that word also in a speech made by him. " Oh," 
says Mr. Barrett, " he will think like the old woman's cow ;" 
and mind, gentlemen, Mr. Attorney-General puts the old wo- 
man's cow into the indictment, "We will think, says he, like 

that, until we clutch what ! Our nationaUty. It was not 

the Queen, or the Chief Justice or the Prime Minister, or the 
Attorney-General they were about clutching, but their nation- 
ality, their independence. I ask you, is this to be brought up 
in judgment against the defendant ? I ask any one man of 
you here, if he were on his oath, has he not read worse articles 
in the English papers, calculated to irritate the people of En- 
gland, and inflame their minds, none of which were prosecuted 
but passed by and forgotten. The advertisement about the 
Clontarf meeting was not what it should be, but was it not 
when observed by Mr. O'Connell at once withdrawn ? 

I have shown you that the true object of that document in the 
Nation was that there should be a grand procession to Clon- 
tarf. At the request of some Protestant clergymen it was giv- 
en up, as it was the Sabbath day, and the time of divine ser- 
vice, and even the streets were avoided in which places of 
worship were. I rely on this to show that no offence was in- 
tended ; but as they had proceeded in a procession to Donny- 
brook, they considered that they might do so to Clontarf. 
There is one article more I shall trouble you with ; but I must 
remark that I cannot approve of the unjust and intemperate 
observations which were sometimes made upon the English 



680 Whiteside's speech 

nation ; for them, a great, free, and magnanimous peole, I ob- 
ject to reviving the recollections of past struggles and conten- 
tions, Thej can only be usefully recalled for one purpose, 
and I hope and believe it was for that purpose, to show the 
people the errors of their forefathers, and by the warning 
teach how to shun them. Let silence forever cover, let dark- 
ness hide them, let no hand withdraw the veil that con- 
ceals them, or if it touches them, let it be for a holy and 
useful purpose, to imbibe morality and peace from the lessons 
of the past. Gentlemen of the jury, I have no more to say 
upon that part of the case. I admit that strong language has 
been used, and I regret it. The term " Saxon " has been ap- 
plied to Enghshmen. Mr. O'Connell has entirely renounced 
it at the request of an English gentleman ; I believe he bor- 
rowed it from Moore. Moore was wrong to have used it. 
Yet, probably, when the trials are over, if I called upon the 
learned gentleman (pointing to the Solicitor-General) I would 
find " Moore's Melodies," and " The Irish Gentleman in search 
of a ReKgion," upon his table ; yet, perhaps, if he knew who 
knocked at the door he would, like the lady in the play, thrust 
one into a drawer, and put the other under the table. 
The last document which I shall refer to is, " The Mo- 
rahty of War," which the Attorney-General has dwelt upon 
so eloquently, and translated with not a little freedom 
mto "The Morality of Rebellion." It seems that from the 
first moment it met his eye it startled his legal mind. But 
if it was the dreadful article he appears to have beheved it to 
be, it astonishes me that he did not at once run off with it to 
the government, and exclaim, " I will forthwith file an infor- 
mation in the Queen's Bench against the author." Gentle- 
men, I wish to address you on a particular question arising 
out of the great and momentous case before you. I have told 
you what constitutes the great crime of conspiracy ; it is one 
of combination, and is fearfully set forth in books, so often 
quoted in the history of the state trials of England, where 
there are terrible examples given of wrong verdicts, by which 
men were deprived of then- liberty, their lives, and by which 
innocence was struck down. But, on the other hand, there 
were in those state trials great and glorious examples of tri- 



IN DEFENCE OF CHAKLES GAYAN DUFFY. 681 

umplis over power, over the Crown, and over kings, as in the 
case of Hardy on parliamentary reform, and in the case of 
Home Tooke, who saved pubhc opinion so far from being ex- 
tinguished in England, and which would have been the case 
had not the jury interfered. In later days, in the days of the 
second James, the seven bishops were charged with a conspi- 
racy for asserting the opinion of freedom ; but then a jury also 
interfered, and those bishops were acquitted, and acquitted 
amid those shouts which proclaimed universal freedom. In 
darker periods of history, in the times of CromweU, who usurped 
the monarchy, and all under the sacred name of religion, yet 
dared not to abohsh the forms of public justice, they so pre- 
vailed and subsisted, that when, in the plenitude of his power, 
he prosecuted for a libel, there were twelve honest men who 
had the courage not to pronounce the defendant guilty, thus 
proving that the unconquerable love of liberty stiU survived 
in the hearts of Englishmen. I will say that the true object of 
this unprecedented prosecution is to stifle the discussion of a 
great pubhc question. Eeviewed in this hght, all other consid- 
erations sink into insignificance ; its importance becomes vast, 
indeed. A nation's rights are involved in the issue, a nation's 
hberties are at stake. These won, what preserves the pre- 
cious privileges you possess ? The exercise of the right of po- 
Utical discussion — free, untrammelled, bold. The laws which 
wisdom framed, the institutions struck out by patriotism, learn- 
ing, or genius, can they preserve the springs of freedom fresh 
and pure ? No ; destroy the right of free discussion, and you 
dry up the sources of freedom. By the same means by which 
your liberties were won can they be increased or defended. 

Do not quarrel with the partial evils free discussion cre- 
ates, nor seek to contract the enjoyment of the greatest pri- 
vilege within the narrow hmits timid men prescribe. With 
the passing mischiefs of its extravagance, contrast the prodi- 
gious blessings it has heaped on man. Free discussion aroused 
the human mind from the torpor of ages, taught it to think, and 
shook the thrones of ignorance and darkness. Free discus- 
sion gave to Europe the reformation which I have been taught 
to believe the mightiest event in the history of the human race, 
which illuminated the world with the radiant light of spiritual 



682 Whiteside's speech 

truth. May it shine with steady and increasing splendor ! 
Free discussion gave to Engand the rerolution, aboHshed tyr- 
anny, swept away the monstrous abuses it rears, and estab- 
lislied the hberties under which we live. Tree discussion, since 
that glorious epoch, has not only preserved but purified our 
constitution, reformed our laws, reduced our punishments, and 
extended its wholesome influence to every portion of our politi- 
cal system. The spirit of inquiry it creates has revealed the 
secrets of nature, explained the wonders of creation, teaching 
the knowledge of the stupendous works of God. Arts, sci- 
ence, civilization, freedom, pure rehgion, are its noble realities. 
Would you undo the labors of science, extinguish Hterature, 
stop the efforts of genius, restore ignorance, bigotry, barbar- 
ism, then put down free discussion, and you have accompHshed 
all. Savage conquerors, in the blindness of their ignorance, 
have scattered and destroyed the intellecual treasures of a 
great antiquity. Those who make war on the sacred rights of 
free discussion, without their ignorance imitate their fury. 
They may check the expression of some thought, which might, 
if uttered, redeem the hberties or increase the happiness* of 
man. The insidious assailants of this great prerogative of in- 
tellectual beings, by the cover under which they advance, con- 
ceal the character of their assault upon the hberties of the hu- 
man race. They seem to admit the liberty to discuss — blame 
only its extravagance, pronounce hollow praises on the value of 
freedom of speech, and straightway begin a prosecution to 
cripple or destroy it. The open despot avows his object 
is to oppress or to enslave ; resistance is certain to en- 
counter his tyranny, and perhaps subvert it. Not so the 
artful assailant of a nation's rights ; he declares friendship 
while he wages war, and professes affection for the thing he 
hates. State prosecutions, if you beheve them, are ever the 
fastest friends of freedom. They tell you peace is disturbed, 
order broken, by the excesses of turbulent and seditious dem- 
agogues. No doubt there might be a seeming peace, a death- 
like stillness, by repressing the feehngs and passions of men. 
So in the fairest portions of Europe this day, there is peace, 
and order, and submission, under paternal despotism, ecclesi- 
astical and civil. That peace springs from terror, that submis- 



IN DEFENCE OF CHABLES GAYAN DUFFY. 683 

sion from ignorance, that silence from despair. Who dares 
discuss, when with discussion and by discussion tyranny must 
perish ? Compare the stillness of despotism with the healthful 
animation, the natural warmth, the bold language, the proud 
bearing, which spring from freedom and the consciousness of 
its possession. Which will you prefer ? Insult not the dignity 
of manhood by supposing that contentment of the heart can 
exist under despotism. There may be degrees in its severity, 
and so degrees in the sufferings of its victims. Terrible the 
dangers which lurk beneath the calm surface of despotic power. 
The movements of the oppressed will, at times, disturb 
their tyrant's tranquilHty, and warn him their day of vengeance 
or of triumph may be nigh. But in these happy countries the 
very safety of the state consists in freedom of discussion. 

Partial evils in all systems of political governments there must 
be ; but their worst effects are obviated when their cause is 
sought' for, discovered, considered, discussed. Milton has 
taught a great political truth, in language as instructive as his 
sublimest verse : " For this is not the liberty which we can 
hope, that no grievances ever should arise in the common- 
wealth — that let no man in this world expect, but when com- 
plaints are freely heard, deeply considered, and speedily re- 
formed ; then is the utmost bound of civil liberty obtained 
that wise men look for." Suffer the complaints of the Irish 
people to be freely heard. You want the power to have them 
speedily, reformed. Their case to-day may be yours to-mor- 
row. Preserve the right of free discussion as you would chng 
to life. Combat error with argument, misrepresentation by 
fact, falsehood with truth. " For who knows not," saith the 
same great writer, " that Truth is strong, next to the Almighty. 
One needs no policies nor stratagems to make her victorious — 
these are the shifts Error uses against her power." If this de- 
mand for a native parliament rests on a delusion, dispel that 
delusion by the omnipotence of truth. Why do you love — 
why do other nations honor England? Are you — are they 
dazzled by her naval or military glories, the splendor of her 
Hterature, her sublime discoveries in science, her boundless 
wealth, her almost incredible labors in every work of art and 
skill? No; you love her— you cling to England because she 



684: whitesede's speech 

has been for ages past tlie seat of free discussion, and, there- 
fore, the home of rational freedom, and the hope of oppressed 
men throughout the world. Under the laws of England it is 
our happiness to live. It breathes the spirit of liberty and 
reason. Emulate this day the great virtues of Enghshmen — 
their love of fairness — their immovable independence, and the 
sense of justice rooted in their nature — these are the virtues 
which quahfy jurors to decide the rights of their fellow men. 
Deserted by these, of what avail is the tribunal of a jury ? It 
is worthless as the human body when the Uving soul has fled. 
Prove to the accused, from whom, perchance, you widely differ 
in opinion, whose liberties and fortunes are in your hands, 
that you are there not to prosecute but to save. Believe me, 
you wiU not secure the true interests of England by leaning 
too severely on your countrymen. They say to their English 
brethren, and with truth — we have been at your side when- 
ever danger was to be faced or honor won — the scorching sun 
of the east and the pestilence of the west. We have endured 
to spread your commerce — to extend your empire — to uphold 
your glory. The bones of our countrymen whitened the fields 
of Portugal, of Spain, of France. Fighting your battles they 
fell — in a nobler cause they could not. . We have helped to 
gather your imperishable laurels. We have helped to win 
you immortal triumphs. Now, in time of peace, we ask you 
to restore that parliament you planted here with your laws 
and language, uprooted in a dismal period of our history, in 
the moment of our terror, our divisions, our weakness, it may 
be — our crime. Ee-estabhsh the Commons on the broad 
foundation of the people's choice ; replace the Peerage, the 
Corinthian pillars of the capitol secured and adorned with the 
strength and splendor of the Crown, and let the monarch of 
England, as in ages past, rule a brilliant and united empire in 
sohdity, magnificence, and power. When the privileges of the 
Enghsh parliament were invaded, that people took the field, 
struck down the ministry, and dragged their sovereign to the 
block. We shall not imitate English precedent. While we 
struggle for a parhament, its surest bulwark, that institution 
you prize so highly, which fosters your wealth, adds to your 
prosperity, and guards your freedom, was ours for six hundred 



IN DEFENCE OF CHAKLES GAVAN DUFFY. 685 

years. Kestore the blessing, and we shall be content. This 
prosecution is not essential for the maintenance of the au- 
thority and prerogative of the Crown. Our gracious sovereign 
needs not state prosecutions to secure her prerogatives or 
preserve her power. She has the unbought loyalty of a 
chivalrous and gallant people. The arm of authority she re- 
quires not to raise. The glory of her gentle reign will be — 
she will have ruled, not by the sword, but by the affections ; 
that the true source of her power has been, not in terrors of 
the law, but in the hearts of hei* people. Your patience is 
exhausted. If I have spoken suitably to the subject, I have 
spoken as I could have wished ; but if, as you may think, 
deficiently, I have spoken as I could. Do you, from what has 
been said, and from the better arguments omitted, which may 
be well suggested by your manly understandings and your 
honest hearts, give a verdict consistent with justice, yet lean- 
ing to liberty — dictated by truth, yet inclining to the side of 
accused men, strugghng against the weight, and power, and 
influence of the Crown, and prejudice more overwhelming 
still — a verdict undesired by a party, but to be applauded by 
the impartial monitor within your breasts, becoming the high 
spirit of Irish gentlemen, and the intrepid guardians of the 
rights and hberties of a free people. 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER. 



SPEECH AT CONCILIATION HALL, DUBLIN, 

July 28, 1846. 



My Lord Mayor : I will commence as Mr. Mitchell con- 
cluded, with an allusion to the Whigs. 

I fullj concur with my friend, that the most comprehensive 
measures which the Whig minister may propose, will fail to 
lift this country up to that position which she has the right to 
occupy, and the power to maintain. A Whig minister, I ad- 
mit, may improve the province — he will not restore the nation. 
Franchises, tenant compensation bills, hberal appointments 
may amehorate, they will not exalt ; they may meet the necessi- 
ties, they will not call forth the abilities of the country. The 
errors of the past may be repaired — the hopes of the future 
wiU not be fulfilled. With a vote in one pocket, a lease in the 
other, and " full justice " before him at the petty sessions, 
in the shape of a " restored magistrate," the humblest peasant 
may be told that he is free ; trust me, my lord, he wiU not have 
the character of a freeman; his spirit to dare, his energy to 
act. From the stateliest mansion down to the poorest cot- 
tage in the land, the inactivity, the meanness, the debasement, 
which provinciahsm engenders, will be perceptible. 

These are not the crude sentiments of youth, though the 
mere commercial pohtician, who has deduced his ideas of 
self-government from the table of imports and exports, may 
satirize them as such. Age has uttered them, my lord, and 
the experience of eight years has preached them to the people. 

A few weeks since, and there stood up in the court of 
Queen's Bench an old and venerable man to teach the coun- 
try the lessons he had learned in his youth, beneath the por- 
tico of the Irish Senate House, and which during a long life 




WILLIAM SMITH O'BRIEN. 



SPEECH AT CONCILIATION HALL. 687 

he had treasured in his heart, as the costHest legacy a true 
citizen could bequeath to the land that gave him birth. 
What said this aged orator ? 

"National independence does not necessarily lead to national virtue and 
happiness ; but reason and experience demonstrate that public spirit 
and general happiness are looked for in vain under the withering influ- 
ence of provincial subjection. The very consciousness of being depen- 
dent on another power for advancement in the scale of national being, 
weighs down the spirit of a people, manacles the efforts of genius, de- 
presses the energies of virtue, blunts the sense of common glory and 
common good, and produces an insulated selfishness of character, the 
surest mark of debasement in the individual, and mortality in the state." 

My lord, it was once said by an eminent citizen of Eome, 
the elder Pliny, that " we owe our youth and manhood to 
our country, but our 'declining age to ourselves." This may 
have been the maxim of the Roman — it is not the maxim of 
the Irish patriot. One might have thought that the anxie- 
ties, the labors, the vicissitudes of a long career, had dimmed 
the fire which burned in the heart of the illustrious Eoman 
whose words I have cited ; but now, almost from the shadow 
of death, he comes forth with the vigor of youth, and the au- 
thority of age, to serve the country in the defence of which 
he once bore arms, by an example, my lord, that must 
shame the coward, rouse the sluggard, and stimulate the 
bold. These sentiments have sunk deep into the public mind ; 
they are recited as the national creed. WhUst these senti- 
ments inspire the people, I have no fear for the national cause. 
I do not dread the venal influence of the Whigs. 

Inspired by such sentiments, the people of this country 
will look beyond the mere redress of existing wrong, and strive 
for the attainment of future power. 

A good government may, indeed, redress the grievances of 
an injured people, but a strong people alone can build up a 
great nation. To be strong, a people must be self-rehant, 
self-ruled, seK sustained. The dependence of one people up- 
on another, even for the benefits of legislation, is the deepest 
source of national weakness. By an unnatural law it exempts 
a people from their j'ust duties — their just responsibhties. 
When you exempt a people from these duties, from these re- 



688 THOMAS FBANCIS MEAGHER. 

sponsibilities, you generate in them a distrust in their own 
powers. Thus you enervate, if you do not utterly destroy 
that spirit whicii a sense of these responsibilities is sure to 
to inspire, and which the fulfiUment of these duties never fails to 
invigorate. Where this spirit does not actuate, the country 
may be tranquil — it will not be prosperous. It may exist, it will 
not thrive. It may hold together, it will not advance. Peace it 
may enjoy — for peace and freedom are compatible. But, my 
lord, it will neither accumulate wealth nor win a character ; it 
wiU neither benefit mankind by the enterprise of its merchants 
nor instruct mankind by the example of its statesmen. 

I make these observations, for it is the custom of some 
moderate pohticians to say, that when the Whigs have accom- 
phshed the " pacification" of the country, there wiU be little 
or no necessity for Kepeal. My lord, there is something else, 
there is everything else to be done when the work of " pacifi- 
cation " has been accomplished — and here it is hardly neces- 
sary to observe that the prosperity of a country is perhaps the 
sole guarantee for its tranquillity, and that the more universal 
the prosperity, the more permanent will be the repose. 

But the Whigs will enrich as well as pacify. Grant it, my 
lord. Then do I conceive that the necessity for Eepeal will 
augment. Great interests demand great safeguards. The 
prosperity of a nation requires due protection of a senate. 
Hereafter a national senate may require the protection of a 
national army. 

So much for the extraordinary affluence with which we are 
threatened, and which, it is said by gentlemen on the opposite 
shore of the Irish Sea, will crush this association, and bury 
the enthusiasts, who clamor for Irish nationahty, in a sepulchre 
of gold. This prediction, however, is feebly sustained by the 
ministerial programme that has lately appeared. 

On the evening of the 16th the Whig premier, in answer to 
a question that was put to him by the member for Finsbury, 
Mr. Duncombe, is reported to have made this consolatory 
announcement : 

"We consider that the social grievances of Ireland are those which 
are most prominent, and to which it is most likely to be in our power to 
afford, not a complete and immediate remedy, but some remedy, some 



SPEECH AT CONCILIATION HALL. 689 

kind of improvement, so tliat some kind of hope may be entertained 
that, some ten or twelve years hence, the country will, by the measures 
we undertake, be in a far better state with respect to the frightful desti- 
tution and misery which now prevail in that country. We have that 
practical object in view." 

After that most consolatory announcement, my lord, let 
those who have the patience of Job and the poverty of Laza- 
rus, continue, in good faith, " to wait on Providence and the 
Whigs," continue to entertain " some kind of hope," that if 
not "a complete and immediate remedy," at least "some 
remedy," " some improvement," will place this country " in a 
far better state " than it is at present, "some ten or twelve 
years hence." After that let those who prefer the periodical 
boons of a Whig government, to that which would be the 
abiding blessing of an Irish parliament — let those who deny 
to Ireland what they assert for Poland — let those who would 
inflict, as Henry Grattan said, " an eternal disability upon this 
country," to which Providence has assigned the largest facili- 
ties for power ; let those who would ratify the "base swap," 
as Mr. Shell once stigmatized the Act of Union, and who 
would stamp perfection upon that deed of perfidy — ^let such 



" Plot, led on in sluggish misery, 
Botten from sire to son, from age to age, 
Proud of their trampled nature." 

But we, my lord, who are assembled in this hall, and in 
whose hearts the Union has not bred the slave's disease — we 
who have not been imperiahzed — we are here with the hope to 
undo that work, which forty-six years ago dishonored the an- 
cient peerage and subjugated the people of our country. 

My lord, to assist the people of Ireland to undo that work, 
I came to this hall. I came here to repeal the Act of Union 
— I came here for nothing else. Upon every other question I 
feel myself at perfect Uberty to differ from each and every one 
of you. Upon questions of finance — questions of a religious 
character — questions of an educational character — questions 
of municipal policy — questions that may arise from the pro- 
ceedings of the legislature — upon all these questions I feel 



690 THOMAS FEANCIS MEAGHEK. 

myself at perfect liberty to differ from each and every one of 
you. Yet more, my lord ; I maintain that it is my right to 
express my opinion upon each of these questions, if necessary. 
The right of free discussion I have here upheld. In the exer- 
cise of that right I have differed sometimes from the leader of 
this Association, and would do so again. That right I will 
not abandon — I shall maintain it to the last. 

In doing so, let me not be told that I seek to undermine the 
influence of the leader of the Association, and am insensible 
to his services. My lord, I am grateful for his services, and 
will uphold his just influence. 

This is the first time I have spoken in these terms of that 
illustrious Irishman in this hall. I did not do so before — I 
felt it was unnecessary. I hate unnecessary praise — ^I scorn 
to receive it — I scorn ever to bestow it. 

No, my lord, I am not ungrateful to the man who struck the 
fetters off my arms, whilst I was yet a child, and by whose 
influence my father — the first Catholic who did so for two 
hundred years — sat for the last tAvo years in the civic chair of 
an ancient city. But, my lord, the same God who gave to that 
great man the power to strike down an odious ascendency in 
this country, and enabled him to institute in this land the 
glorious law of religious equality — the same God gave to me 
a mind that is my own — a mind that has not been mortgaged 
to the opinions of any man or any set of men — a mind that 
I was to use, and not surrender. 

My lord, in the exercise of that right, which I have here 
endeavored to uphold — a right which this Association should 
preserve inviolate, if it desires not to become a despot- 
ism — in the exercise of that right, I have differed from Mr. 
O'Connell on previous occasions, and differ from him now. I 
do not agree with him in the opinion he entertains of my friend, 
Charles Gavan Duffy — that man whom I am proud indeed to 
call my friend — though he is a " convicted conspirator," and 
suffered for you in Richmond prison. I do not think he is a 
" maligner." I do not think he has lost, or deserves to lose, 
the pubUc favor. 

;I have no more connection with the Nation than I have with 
the Times. I therefore feel no dehcacy on appearing here 



SPEECH AT CONCILIATION HALL. 691 

this day in defence of its principles, witli which I avow my- 
self identified. 

My lord, it is to me a source of true dehght and honest 
pride to speak this day in defence of that great journal. I do 
not fear to assume the position ; exalted though it be, it is 
easy to maintain it. The character of that journal is above 
reproach. The ability that sustains it has won an European 
fame. The genius of which it is the offspring, the truth of 
which it is the oracle, have been recognized, my lord, by 
friends and foes. I care not how it maybe assailed — I care 
not howsoever great may be the talent, howsoever high may 
be the position of those who now consider it their duty to im- 
peach its writings — I do think that it has won too splendid a 
reputation to lose the influence it has acquired. The people, 
whose enthusiasm has been kindled by the impetuous fire of 
its verse, and whose sentiments have been ennobled by the 
earnest purity of its teachings, will not ratify the censure that 
has been pronounced upon it in this hall. Truth will have its 
day of triumph as well as its day of trial ; and I foresee that 
the fearless patriotism, which, in those pages, has braved the 
prejudices of the day, to enunciate grand truths, will triumph 
in the end. 

My lord, such do I beheve to be the character, such do I 
anticipate will be the fate of the principles that are now im- 
peached. 

This brings me to what may be called the " question of the 
day." 

Before I enter upon that question, however, I will allude to 
one observation which fell from the honorable member for 
Kilkenny, and which may be said to refer to those who ex- 
pressed an opinion that has been construed into a declaration 
of war. 

The honorable gentleman said — in reference, I presume, to 
those who dissented from the resolutions of Monday — that 
those who were loudest in their declarations of war, were 
usually the most backward in acting up to those declarations. 
My lord, I do not find fault with the honorable gentleman for 
giving expression to a very ordinary saying, but this I will 
state, that I did not volunteer the opinion he condemns — to 



692 THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHEE. 

the declaration of that opinion I was forced. You left me no 
alternative — I should compromise my opinion, or avow it. To 
be honest, I avowed it. I did not do so to brag, as they say ; 
we have had too much of that " bragging " in Ireland. I 
would be the last man to emulate the custom. 

Well, I dissented from those peace resolutions, as they are 
called. Why, so ? In the first place, my lord, I conceive that 
there was not the least necessity for them. 

No member of this association suggested an appeal to arms. 
No member of this association advised it. No member of the 
association would be so infatuated as to do so. In the exist- 
ing circumstances of the country, an excitement to arms would 
be senseless and wicked, because irrational. To talk, in our 
days, of repeahng the Act of Union by force of arms, would be 
to rhapsodize. If the attempt were made, it would be a de- 
cided failure. There might be riot in the street ; there would 
be no revolution in the country. 

The Secretary will far more effectually promote the cause of 
Eepeal by registering votes in Greene Street, than registering 
firearms in the head poHce office. Conciliation Hall, on Burgh 
Quay, is more impregnable than a rebel camp on Vinegar Hill. 
The hustings at Dundalk will be more successfully stormed, 
than the magazine in the Park. The registry club, the read- 
ing room, the polling booths, these are the only positions in 
the country we can occupy. Yoters' certificates, books, 
pamphlets, newspapers, these are the only weapons we can 
employ. 

Therefore, my lord, I cast my vote in favor of the peaceful 
policy of this Association. It is the only policy we can adopt. 
If that pohcy be pursued with truth, with courage, with fixed 
determination of purpose, I firmly believe it wiU succeed. 

But, my lord, I dissented from the resolutions before us for 
other reasons. I stated the first ; I wiU now come to the 
second : 

I dissented from them, for I felt that, by assenting to them, 
I should have pledged myself to the unqualified repudiation of 
physical force, in all countries, at all times, and under every 
circumstance. This I could not do ; for, my lord, I do not 
abhor the use of arms in the vindication of national rights. 



SPEECH AT CONCILIATION HALL. 693 

There are times when arms will alone sufl&ce, and when po- 
litical amehorations call for a drop of blood, and many thou- 
sand di'ops of blood. 

Opinion, I admit, will operate against opinion ; but, as the 
honorable member for Kilkenny has observed, force must be 
used against force. The soldier is proof against an argument, 
but he is not proof against a bullet. The man that will listen 
to reason, let him be reasoned with. But it is the weaponed 
arm of the patriot that can alone prevail against battahoned 
despotism. 

Then, my lord, I do not condemn the use of arms as im- 
moral ; nor do I conceive it profane to say that the King of 
Heaven — the Lord of Hosts — the God of Battles — ^bestows 
His benediction upon those who unsheathe the sword in the 
hour of a nation's peril. 

From that evening on which, in the valley of Bethulia, He 
nerved the arm of the Jewish girl to smite the drunken tyrant 
in his tent, down to this, our day, on which He has blessed the 
in surgent chivalry of the Belgian priest. His Almighty hand 
hath ever been stretched forth from His Throne of Light to 
consecrate the flag of freedom — to bless the patriot's sword. 
Be it in the defence, or be it in the assertion of a people's 
liberty, I hail the sword as a sacred weapon ; and if, my lord, 
it has sometimes taken the shape of the serpent, and reddened 
the shroud of the oppressor with too deep a dye, hke the an- 
ointed rod of the High Priest, it has at other times, and as 
often, blossomed into celestial flowers to deck the freeman's 
brow. 

Abhor the sword — stigmatize the sword ! No, my lord, for 
in the passes of the Tyrol it cut to pieces the banner of the 
Bavarians, and through those cragged passes struck a path 
to fame for the peasant insurrectionists of Innspruck. 

Abhor the sword — stigmatize the sword ! No, my lord, for 
at its blow, a grand nation started from the waters of the At- 
lantic ; and by its redeeming magic, and in the quivering of its 
crimson light, the crippled Colony sprang into the attitude of 
a proud Eepublic, — prosperous, limitless, and invincible. 

Abhor the sword — stigmatize the sword ! No, my lord, for 
it swept the Dutch marauders out of the fine old towns of Bel- 



694 THOMAS FBANCIS MEAGHEK. 

gium — scourged them back to their own phlegmatic swamps — 
and knocked their flag and sceptre, their laws and bayonets, 
into the sluggish waters of the Scheldt. 

My lord, I learned that it was the right of a nation to gov- 
ern herself, not in this HaU, but upon the ramparts of Ant- 
werp. This, the first article of a nation's creed, I learned upon 
those ramparts, where freedom was justly estimated, and the 
possession of the precious gift was purchased by the effusion 
of generous blood. 

My lord, I honor the Belgians, I admire the Belgians, I love 
the Belgians for their enthusiasm, their courage, their success ; 
and I, for one, will not stigmatize,, for I do not abhor the 
means by which they obtained a Citizen King, a Chamber of 
Deputies. 



HOX. THOMAS D'ARCY iTGEE. 



SPEECH BEFOEE THE lEISH PROTESTANT BENE- 
VOLENT SOCIETY, QUEBEC, MAY, 1862. 



I RECEIVED some time ago a warm invitation from my friend. 
Captain Anderson, the secretary of this society, asking me to 
be present and take part in the proceedings of this evening. 
It was an invitation given with great cordiahty, for an Irish 
society's benefit, and the object was to enable the society to 
assist the friendless emigrant and the unfortunate resident. 
It seems to one to be incident to our state of society, where we 
have no legal provision for the poor, no organized system of 
reHef of any public general kind, that there should be a divi- 
sion of charitable labor among our different voluntary socie- 
ties ; and as I look upon them all, whether under the auspices 
of Saint Patrick or any other patron saint, as being themselves 
but members of one vast society — the society of Canada — I 
did not feel that I could, either on Irish or on Canadian 
grounds, decline the invitation. It is very true, Mr. President, 
that you and I will not be found to-morrow worshipping under 
the same roof ; but is that any reason why we should not be 
united here to-night in a common work of charity ? With me 
it is no reason ; such differences exist m the first elements of 
our population ; and it is the duty of every man, especially of 
every man undergoing the education of a statesman, to en- 
deavor to mitigate instead of inflaming rehgious animosities. 
No prejudices lie nearer the surface than those which plead 
the sanction of reUgion ; any idiot may arouse them, to the 



696 THOMAS d'arcy mc gee. 

wise man's consternation, and tlie peaceful man's deep regret. 
If, in times past, tliey have been too often and too easily 
aroused, we must all deeply deplore it ; but for the future — m 
these new and eventful days, when it is so essential that there- 
shall be complete harmony within our ranks, — ^let us all 
agree to brand the propagandist of bigotry as the most dan- 
gerous of our enemies, because his work is to divide us among 
ourselves, and thereby render us incapable of common de- 
fence. 

It is upon this subject of the public spirit to be cultivated 
among us — of the spirit which can alone make Canada safe 
and secure, rich and renowned — which can alone attract pop- 
ulation and augment capital, that I desire to say a few words 
with which I must endeavor to fulfill your expectations. I 
feel that it is a serious subject for a popular festival — but 
these are serious times, and they bring upon their wings most 
serious reflections. That shot fired at Fort Sumter on the 12th 
of April, 1861, had a message for the North as well as for the 
South ; and here, in Quebec, if anywhere, by the light which 
history lends us, we should find those who can correctly read 
that eventful message. Here, from this rock, for which the 
immortals have contended ; here, from this rock, over which 
EicheHeu's wisdom and Chatham's genius, and the memory of 
heroic men, the glory of three great nations has hung its halo, 
we should look forth upon a continent convulsed, and ask of a 
ruler : " Watchman, what of the night?" 

That shot fired at Fort Sumter was the signal-gun of a new 
epoch for North America, which told the people of Canada, 
more plainly than human speech can ever express it, to sleep 
no more except on their arms ; unless in their sleep they de- 
sire to be overtaken and subjugated. For one, Mr. President, 
I can safely say, that, if I know myself, I have not a particle of 
prejudice against the United States ; on the contrary, I am 
bound to declare that many things in the constitution and the 
people, I sincerely esteem and admire. What I contend for 
with myself, and what I would impress upon others, is, that the 
lesson of the last few months, furnished by America to the 
world, should not be thrown away upon the inhabitants of 
Canada. 



SPEECH AT QUEBEC. 697 

I do not believe that it is our destiny to be engulfed into a 
Eepublican union, renovated and inflamed with the wine of 
victory, of which she now drmks so freely ; it seems to me we 
have theatre enough under our feet to act another and a wor- 
thier part ; we can hardly win the Americans on our own 
terms, and we never ought to join them on theirs. A Cana- 
dian nationality — not French Canadian, nor British Canadian, 
nor Irish Canadian — patriotism rejects the prefix, — is, in my 
opinion, what we should look forward to, — that is what we 
ought to labor for, that is what we ought to be prepared to 
defend to the death. Heirs of one seventh of the continent, 
inheritors of a long ancestral story, and no part of it dearer 
to us than the glorious tale of this last century— warned 
not by cold chronicles only, but by hving scenes passing 
before our eyes, of the dangers of an unmixed democracy — we 
are here to vindicate our capacity by the test of a new politi- 
cal creation. 

What we most immediately want, Mr. President, to carry on 
that work, is men ; more men, and still more men ! The la- 
dies, I dare say, will not object to that doctrine. We may not 
want more lawyers and doctors, but we want more men in the 
town and country. We want the signs of youth and growth 
in our young and growing country. One of our maxims should 
be, " Early marriages, and death to old bachelors." I have 
long entertained a project of a special tax upon that most un- 
desirable class of the population, and our friend, the Finance 
Minister, may perhaps have something of the kind among the 
agreeable surprises of his next Budget. Seriously, Mr. Presi- 
dent, what I chiefly wanted to say on coming here, is this, that 
if we would make Canada safe and secure, rich and renowned, 
we must all Hberalize — locally, sectionally, religiously, nation- 
ally. 

There is room enough in this country for one great free 
people ; but there is not room enough under the same flag and 
the same laws, for two or three angry, suspicious, obstructive 
" nationahties." 

Dear, most justly dear to every land beneath the sun, are the 
children born in her bosom, and nursed upon her breast, but 
when the man of another country, wherever born, speaking 



698 THOMAS d'abcy mc gee. 

whatever speech, holding whatever creed, seeks out a conntiy 
to serve, and honor, and cleave to, in weal or in woe, — when 
he heaves up the anchor of his heart from its old moorings, 
and lays at the feet of the mistress of his choice, his new coun- 
try, all the hopes of his ripe manhood, he establishes, by such 
devotion, a claim to consideration, not second even to that of the 
children of the soil. He is their brother, delivered by a new 
birth from the dark-wombed Atlantic ship that ushers him 
into existence in the new world — ^he stands by his own elec- 
tion among the children of the household, and narrow and 
most unwise is that species of public spirit, which, in the per- 
verted name of patriotism, would refuse him all he asks, " a 
fair field and no favor." 

I am not about to talk politics, Mr. President, though these 
are grand pohtics. I reserve all else for what is usually 
called "another place," — and I may add, for another time. 
But I am so thoroughly convinced and assured that we are 
gliding along the currents of a new epoch, that if I break 
silence at all in the presence of my fellow subjects, I cannot 
choose but speak of the immense issues which devolve upon 
us, at this moment, in this country. 

I may be pardoned, perhaps, if I refer to another matter 
that comes home to you, Mr. President, and to myself. 
Though we are alike opposed to aU invidious national distinc- 
tions on this soil, we are not opposed, I hope, to giving fuU 
credit to all the elements which at the present day compose our 
population. In this respect, it is a source of gratification to 
learn that among your invited guests to-night there are twelve 
or thirteen members of the House to which I have the honor 
to belong— gentlemen from both sides of the House — who 
drew their native breath in our own dearly beloved ancestral 
island. It takes three quarters of the world in these days to 
hold an Irish family, and it is pleasant to know that some of 
the elder sons of the family are considered, by their discrimin- 
ating fellow citizens, worthy to be entrusted with the liberties 
and fortunes of their adopted country. "We have here men of 
Irish birth who have led, and who still lead the ParHament of 
Canada, and who are determined to lead it in a spirit of gen- 
uine hberahty. 



SPEECH AT QUEBEC. 699 

We, Irishmen, Protestant and Catholic, born and bred in a 
land of religious controversy, should never forget that we now 
live and act in a land of the fullest religious and civil liberty. 
All we have to do, is, each for himself, to keep down dissen- 
sions, which can only weaken, impoverish and retard the 
country each for himself, do all he can to increase its wealth, 
its strength and its reputation ; each for himself, you and you, 
gentlemen, and all of us — to welcome every talent, to hail 
every invention, to cherish every gem of art, to foster every 
gleam of authorship, to honor every acquirement and every 
natural gift, to lift ourselves to the level of our destinies, to 
rise above all low limitations and narrow circumscriptions, to 
cultivate that true catholicity of spirit, which embraces all 
creeds, all classes, and aU. races, in order to make of our 
boundless province, so rich in known and unknown resources, 
a great new Northern nation. 



BIOaEAPHICAL NOTES. 



Edmund Bukke, the purest of English statesmen ; the first great 
English orator, refined, learned, eloquent ; was born in Dublin, 
Jan. 1, 1730, and after a careful training in good schools, entered 
Trinity College. There he became deeply interested in metaphy- 
sical studies, and on graduating, sought a professorship in a Scotch 
coUege ; but even in this he was unsuccessful. Proceeding to 
London, he began his studies for the bar at the Middle Temple, in 
1750, and even thought of emigrating to America ; but his love of 
literature inspired several works which met a cordial reception, and 
his pen was frequently employed by Dodsley. In 1761 he became 
private secretary to Lord Hahfax, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and 
at a subsequent date held the same position under the Marquis of 
Kockingham. He entered parliament in January, 1766, and on 
the first day attracted the attention of Pitt. He soon became a 
leading spirit, his upright soul, his great talents being always on 
the side of right, whether the oppressed were in America, in Ire- 
land, or in India. For nearly thirty years he was in every impor- 
tant movement, and his speeches and writings form one of the 
most valuable parts of EngKsh literature, as studies for all who 
enter on pubhc Hfe, He died at Beaconsfield, July 9, 1797. 

Richard Beinslev Shekidan, M. P., dramatist, orator and states- 
man, erratic, yet able, was born in Dublin, in 1751, of parents, 
both of whom had made their mark in literature. He was how- 
ever regarded in boyhood as a most impenetrable dunce. While 
still young he married, and following the bent of his genius and 
a hereditary taste, he began to write for the stage and at once at- 
tained success. 

On entering parliament, in 1780, he made so poor a figure that 
friends advised him to renounce all hope of success, as he evidently 



702 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 

had no talent for oratory. Hence his magnificent speech in the 
case of the Princesses of Oude came like a thunder-clap upon all, 
and Burke declared it " the most astonishing effort of eloquence, 
argument and wit united, of which there was any record or tradi- 
tion. " 

He continued his brilliant poUtical and dramatic Hfe till 1812, 
when his irregular career caused him to break down entirely, and 
he died deserted by all but a few faithful friends in London, July 
7,1816. 

Charles Phillips, the most flowery, ornate, and polished of 
Irish orators, was born in Sligo in 1789. Admitted to the bar in 
1812, his native talent and close study made him a perfect master 
of forensic eloquence, and his speeches attracted the attention of 
the great reviewers in the neighboring isle. Though not entering 
into pohtical life, he gave his eloquence to the great popular move- 
ments ; but never forsook the bar and the triumphs of the crimi- 
nal courts. His merits secured the only promotion he coveted, 
that in the line of his profession; and his ability in commercial law 
led to his appointment as a judge in bankruptcy at Liverpool, 
whence he passed to London to fill the more important office of 
Commissioner of the Insolvent Debtor Court. He died in Lon- 
don in 1859, esteemed as a poet, an orator, a writer and a judge. 

Robert Emmet, whose noble speech from the dock transformed 
that place into one of the great rostrums of eloquence, was born 
in Dublin in 1780, and after a distinguished career at Trinity 
College, came forth to join the movement in 1798. He escaped to 
France ; but returned in 1802 to organize a revolution. He 
failed, and died Sept. 20, 1803, by the hands of the English law, 
which has seldom found aught in Ireland worthy of a higher re- 
ward, except what in other lands would meet with execration. 
Emmet's epitaph is still unwritten. 

Hon. James Whiteside, an eminent forensic orator, was born in 
1806, the son of a clergyman. After studying at the Temple, he 
was admitted to the bar, where his ability was soon recognized. 
He was retained by one of the traversers in the great State Trials, 
and his defence of Charles Gavan Dufty is full of the finest orator- 
ical power. This effort made his popularity as an advocate un- 
bounded, and his defence of WilHam Smith O'Brien, and his man- 



BIOGKAPHICAL NOTBS. 703 

agement of the case of Mrs. Yelverton, now Lady Avonmore, justi- 
fied the popular opinion. He has since, strangely enough, been 
Solicitor-General and Attorney-General in Ireland. Eminent as a 
legislator, he is known also in the field of literature. 

Thomas Francis Meagher was one of the most brilliant orators 
amidst the men of talent and patriotism, who, on the failure of 
O'Connell's Repeal movement, formed the Young Ireland party, 
convinced that England, insensible to every feeling of honesty, 
would yield only to force, the equal rights, the home legislation, 
and local improvement which the Irish people claimed as due to 
them by the immutable principles of natural law. He was born 
in 1823, in Waterford, where his father rose in time to be the first 
Cathohc mayor since the Reformation, Educated at Clongowes 
aad Stonyhurst, his patriotic ardor had been stimulated by wit- 
nessing the successful effort of Catholic Belgium, in throwing off 
the oppressive yoke of a tyrannical Protestant sister state. He 
entered warmly into the Repeal movement, but when all hojDC 
seemed lost, joined the Confederation, and taking part in the at- 
tempted insurrection in 1848, was arrested, tried and condemned 
to death. He was however transported to Van Dieman's Land, 
whence he escaped to the United States. There devoting himself 
to the law, he had acquired by his talents a decided position, when 
the civil war broke out in 1861. After marching to the scene of 
war with the 69th N. Y. Militia, he organized and led through a 
series of campaigns the Irish Brigade, whose valor and fame will 
rival in history that which bore the name in the French service. 
When it was almost utterly annihilated, and the government 
which so lavishly squandered their blood, refused to allow him to 
recruit its shattered ranks, he resigned, no promotion rewarding 
his services. Returning to his profession, he accepted the toil- 
some and inferior office of Secretary of Montana Territory, and 
while Acting Governor was accidentally drowned in the Missouri, 
at Fort Benton, July 1, 1867. 

Hon. Thomas D'Aecy McGee, poet, orator, journalist, and 
statesman, was born at Carlingford, Ireland, April 13th, 1825, and 
after going through the coiirse of a day-school in Wexford, came, 
when seventeen, to the United States, and attracting attention by a 
public speech that showed his ability, became attached to a popu- 
lar newspaper, of which he was soon editor. His writings and 



704 BIOGEAPHICAL NOTES. 

speeches attracting the notice of O'Connell, he returned to Ireland^ 
and, on the staff of the Freeman and Nation, rendered essential 
service. He too joined the Confederation, but on the failure of 
the attempt in 1848, was temporarily in Scotland, whence he es- 
caped in disguise, through Ireland to the United States. As edi- 
tor of the New York Nation and the American Celt, he stiU bat- 
tled in the cause of Ireland, and full of designs for the welfare of 
his countrymen, conceived a scheme of western colonization, which 
led to a convention at Buffalo in 1857. The project failed ; but 
his countrymen in Canada invited him to that province. A 
short residence convinced him that, in many respects, Canada 
was reaUy superior to the United States, as a home for his exiled 
countrymen. His own rise is a proof. He was soon elected to the 
Provincial parliament as a member from Montreal, and taking his 
sea.t devoted himself in all the breadth and vigor of his statesman- 
like mind to the best interests of the province. In 1862, the Irish 
rebel of 1848 became President of the Executive Council of Canada, 
and for a time also discharged the duties 'of Provincial Secretary; 
he was subsequently Minister of Agriculture and Emigration, 
always discharging the duties of his high offices with abihty and 
integrity. 

His clear mind conceived the plan of a Union of the various 
Biitish colonies in America into one government, with uniform 
laws, as the best means for its speedy development, and to this end 
he labored with his eloquent tongue and pen both in Canada and 
in England. 

When the great object was effected, and the Dominion of Canada 
was established, Mr. McGee declined a proffered seat in the Min- 
istry, content as a member of the Dominion parliament, to which 
his fellow-subjects raised him, to give his labors for Canada. Still 
in the prime of his manhood, still full of projects for the good of 
the province and of his countrymen, he fell by the hand of an as- 
sassin in April, 1868. " Great in his eloquence ; his reputation 
grew with the growth of the country, which his energies helped to 
increasing force." 



THE END. 

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